Tea

I hadn't seen you in years when I booked a flight to visit you in Buenos Aires. You lived somewhere cool and far away and I was hungry for a trip. 

You didn't know anything about me, so you asked my mom what I liked. She said, 

Tea, not coffee. 

So when I arrived, you took me to a tea shop. I marveled at all the loose leaf in glass jars on the shelves. I bought a yellow tea tin with a cat on it. 

You had cats the last time we saw each other in Chicago. 

I was a kid but I felt like a woman when we walked around the city at night. 

I met your partner. I don't think anyone ever explained to me that you were gay. 

15 years later, in Buenos Aires, we drank strong cocktails before dinner. You asked me about my mom and shared vague snippets of your childhood. They were never positive memories. 

One thing my mom forgot to tell you, 

I like women, not men. 

I was assured of this in college when my friend Elizabeth brewed tea for me and we watched Downton Abbey together in the dorm common room. E was a soccer player, a writer, a lesbian. I thought about her with other women. 

I wanted to complain to you about my mom. But if I gave you an inch, you took a mile and said too much. 

You said she was too uptight. Too controlling. 

But that she had the worst of it growing up, the worst of your mother's alcohol-fueled criticism. 

I said she was not accepting. Too close-minded. 

But that she was my mom, and I would love her no matter what. 

We both wanted to complain, and stand up for her, at the same time. 

She couldn't be all good or all bad. My mother is owed the same complexity and multitudes as her daring, lone-wolf brother who lived on another continent alone. 

And I was in the middle, taut on the string pulled tight between you. 

My mom tried to buy me tea tins when I requested them one year for Christmas. 

She bought the wrong kind, and really, really tried to involve me in the purchase of the correct kind. I gave her an inch and she took a mile. Determined to fulfill my one Christmas wish. 

I found the tea tin I wanted in that shop in Buenos Aires. It held the last of my favorite loose leaf from Myanmar. Now it contains black tea from the British novelty shop in Rice Village. 

It was on the counter the last time my family was here. We talked about my parents' will and trust. We talked about the benefits and risks of giving my brother and I equal power in inheritance decisions. 

The risks being: We get in a fight, just like you & mom. We don't trust each other. Our egos are wounded. 15 years from now, my adult daughter visits my brother and she struggles to balance 

complaining 

and 

loving

at the same time.