Tea Time

Five older ladies have had tea together every month for the past 60 years, ever since they finished high school. Although their personalities are very diverse, they have been together so long they can forgive one another anything. Together, they reminisce about the old days and reflect on more current affairs. Laughing, they read aloud from a housekeeping book, concluding that things haven’t changed that much in terms of male-female relations. Although that twerking they saw on TV recently was really something new. Their stories are many and varied, their opinions forthright. One lady has no problem at telling another that her husband was as ugly as sin. Sixty years become sixty-one, sixty-two, even sixty-four. And every month the cookies are laid out, whipped cream is put onto the pastries, the tea infusers bobbing in the teapot. The ladies always appear in immaculate makeup and clothing at their meetings, which are sometimes hilarious, but always warm and full of love. Teatime never starts without a brief prayer and an expression of their realization that they have a lot to be thankful for. A meditation on youth, age and friendship, and about the things that pass: “Have you noticed our group is shrinking a bit?”