leilah tov- putting the tea set to bed

6 shvat 5781 

ive only recently started properly putting my teaware to ‘bed.’ i used to quickly wash my gaiwan out right after drinking my tea. i would wash it with my fingers and hot water from the kitchen sink and put it aside to air dry. i was surprised when i started to see tea stains. why would those appear? i washed it out immediately after using, how was it getting stained?

 

firstly, i am not opposed to tea stains. i do not believe if someone drinks from something that has tea stains they are any less of a person. i am not normally someone to be this persnickety about things like this. i am a grungy garbage princess, why should this matter to me? 

 

my generic tea mug (that i bought at the salvation army ten years ago that i still have and still use daily) that i drink herbal tea out of every morning has hella tea stains. i definitely do not wash it every day, nuh uh. but i care about my gaiwan not having stains. that’s just the way i am. for now at least.

 

i have also come to enjoy the act of cleaning and putting away my gaiwan. i boil some water and pour it in the saucer portion of the gaiwan, place the wan (bowl) portion in the water filled saucer, and fill the wan with hot water. i dip the ridge of the gai (lid) into the wan and keep turning until it has all passed through the hot water. i then rub it dry with a bandana that i keep by me as a tea towel. i do the same thing with the cup i drink from and then empty the hot water from the wan into the cup. i dry the wan making sure to get it good where the leaves were and then on the bottom where it rests in the saucer (where drips pool and can cause stains). i then pour out the water from the saucer and dry it making sure to get in where said drops collect. finally i dump out the water from the cup i drank from and rub it dry.

 

that was a very boring paragraph. i am sorry. i was tempted to turn it into an nsfw romance novel scene with erotically charged descriptions of rubbing and drying but i thought, nah, not necessary.

 

the main reason i enjoy this (besides the same reason i enjoy washing dishes. yes, im a dweeb), is that i like feeling the heated porcelain in my hands. my fingers are always cold and one thing i love about tea drinking is the heat. i like warming myself with hot beverages and i like holding the heated teaware. i will cup the gaiwan in my plams between steeps to soak up its warmth. it is what i need most in the winter. warmth.