Taking Tea with Proust

Marcel, let’s pinch the gold-leaf 
handle with our fingertips, purse 
our lips, clink our china cups, 
& toast. I can hold my little pinky 

in the air & so can you; we can 
pinky swear by the power of tea 
& cookies. For me, it was Lipton 
served in a Tupperware tumbler, 

tannins subdued with a generous 
sluice of whole milk, the bitterness 
of a prolonged steep made sweet 
with a heap of refined sugar. This 

is how it was shared when my nana 
took her evening brew in our kitchen 
on Fremont, my Combray. Listen 
to the busy hum of a circular 

florescent, clicked on with a string. 
Trace your French fingers over 
the endless folds of pearl 
in the Formica table. See how 

the better part of my girl’s face 
disappeared inside that cup 
so the scent of mass-produced 
tea, fluffed for a child’s palate, 

overwhelmed me even before 
the first sip. Yet it is the comfort 
of melting plastic I remember 
now, the Lipton underpinned 

with polycarbonate, a foreign 
taste, not wholly unpleasant, 
slicking the roof of my mouth. 
I can almost taste the Nilla Wafer, 

tea-logged, as it fell apart in my fingers 
& can almost choke on the sodden
crumbs that gathered at the bottom 
of the tumbler. This was no 

fluted valve of a scallop shell. Just 
an over-sized yellow button 
for an over-sized coat. A trifle 
burnished a little brown by 

baking. A mouthful like vanilla, 
but not. Vanillin. A pretty nabisco 
roundness to the lignin flavor bite
& close enough to the real thing. 

So it was with the seventies, how 
everything real was replaced by 
the promise of chemistry. Did you 
know we used to make milk

with water? Did you know 
that it wasn’t butter, but 
Parkay? Did you know food 
was arranged for watching 

Charlie’s Angels? Salisbury Steak 
an umami blend of beef bits, tomato 
paste & soy, unrelated to either 
Salisbury or steak, mashed 

potatoes textured like fine, wet 
sand & the brownie, soft all the way 
through, how it clung to my teeth 
like recollection that refuses 

to let go. Marcel, I may seem 
a wisdom-worn teetotaler 
all full of critique, but if I could 
cherry my tongue with Red #40, 

scraping at my Italian Ice with 
a wooden paddle while watching 
the jeweled pool liner shimmer 
in the sun, I would. If I could quaff 

a Carnation Instant Breakfast while 
nana & I watch the Osmonds flash 
their big teeth, I would. If I could 
smear my Ritz crackers with Skippy 

& eat so many that I ruin my appetite 
for dinner as Velma & those meddling 
kids foil another plot on our over-sized 
Zenith, I would. If only I could scoop 

sweetness into my dish from the tub 
of rainbow sherbet & let it melt on 
my tongue while listening to disco 
crackle on my transistor radio, 

but it’s all gone now: Tupperware 
fluorescence & Formica, pools TV 
& Parkay, Lipton Skippy & nana. 
Even if a bit of tea mellowed 

by milk fat & sugar can make it all 
rise again like steam from a kettle, 
my Fremont Street has been swallowed 
up by the years. Marcel, please 

pass me a napkin & let’s toast to 
the hold the past has on us. Let’s lift 
a cup to the memories that refuse to fall 
back into the caves of our throats.

SONIA GREENFIELD

Sonia Greenfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Letdown (White Pine Press) and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market (Codhill Press). She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review. Find more at soniagreenfield.com.