Anne's Tea Recipe

Life flows like water; not seamless, but continuous, like a stream bouncing its way along the rocks. Memories come forth however, like individual ice cubes poured from a pitcher. Sometimes they spill forth quickly, one after another, giving you disjointed glimpses of your past; sometimes they come slowly, one at a time, giving you time to savor each one, before going on to the next. Since my mother’s death, memories of my life are unstoppable, until I have become overwhelmed by the fullness of my thirty-one years. I have sat for days in solitude in the attic of the old Victorian boarding house in which I live, surrounded by the remnants and remembrances of life with my mother. The house has always been here. My mother has always been here. They are intricately interrelated. One without the other seems unreal, impossible even, and leaves me feeling empty and abandoned, even though the house is still filled with people and life.

Part of me wants to run away, but the rented rooms of this house have allowed me to pursue my dream of being a writer, albeit a barely successful one and will continue to support me while I work on my great, yet to be published, novel. I have no words to write today however; instead, I sit for hours at the attic window watching the city beyond, listening to the voices that drift up from below.

Gazing out the window, my memories are interrupted by a light knock on the attic door. I assume it is one of the current occupants of my home who insist on making sure I eat regular meals.

“Come in.” I say quietly.

Looking toward the entry, I am startled by the visage of an unknown person standing in my attic doorway. A diminutive man with very red hair with streaks of white ,walks into the attic. He does not have to stoop to get through the five-foot six-inch doorway, but walks right in, looking, not at me, but around the large attic at the discarded antique furniture, the stacks of boxes, old travel trunks, and sundry items from past remodeling projects on the house. As his large green eyes take in every corner of the crowded space, the smile he wears grows ever wider. Finally, he rests his gaze upon me, and I think he will break into laughter. He has an actual twinkle in his eyes and his grin is comically broad. Inappropriately so I think, considering that my mother has been dead less than five days. Does he not know she is dead? Who is he and why is here in my attic interrupting my solitude and my sorrow?! If I was a different person who lived in a different house, perhaps I would have been more surprised or upset, but I was used to strangers in my home, even now. He must have been here for a reason. He would not have made it to the attic had it not been allowed by others.

He walks slowly over to where I sit at the window, looking around as he does so. His gaze stops on an old wooden orange crate, which he pulls up next to me and sits down upon. When his smile falters, I notice the age around his eyes and the weariness in his face. He appears to hold a million worries in his head, but they are all kept at bay by that smile. We look at each other, neither of us saying a word for the longest time. Finally, as I am about to ask him who he is, he speaks first, breaking the silence.

“Ian O’Flarity at your service,” he says with a sad slow smile. “You’ve no idea how sorry I am that it is only now that we are meeting.”

Unexpectedly, I find myself smiling back. His voice is light, calming and he has the loveliest Irish cadence I have ever heard spoke. He is easily understood, but the accent is thick and completes the picture of a leprechaun that had entered my head when I first saw him. Had he been wearing green instead of a tailored Italian suit, I would have asked if he was bringing me my mother’s long-lost pot of gold.

I don’t know what to say so I reply quietly, “Mr. O’Flarity, I am sure I don’t know you, so how can I help you?”

That mysterious twinkle comes back into his eyes. “Oh, I know who you are lass, and you should have known me long before this time, but it was not allowed.” The weariness again returns to his face. “I never understood that,” he says almost to himself. “It’s not as if you haven’t been well old enough to know for a long time and I’m sorry it’s me that’s got to be doing the telling.”

“Telling of what?” I ask with a little more than a hint of trepidation in my voice.

“Who you are of course.” At my attempt to protest he continues, “No, let me finish. There’s more that you don’t know about your family than you do. When your mother was a young woman, she fell in love with an American lad who was traveling through Ireland. She told her parents that she wished to marry the lad and move to America. They were not only against the idea, but told her she would be disowned should she choose this path. Your mother was a stubborn woman, young and in love so she left her family and moved to America. The family, true to their word, disowned her. She never spoke to them again.”

I interrupt him at this juncture. “I know all of this!” I say exasperatedly. “Why are you here?”

I know I am being rude, but I just do not want to deal with this right now. I just want to be left alone.

Mr. O’Flarity smiles indulgently, “I’m here lass,” he continues, “Because I have kept tabs on your mum, and you, for all these years. I have done so at the bequest of her family, of your family. Your mother never reached out to the family, so I was not allowed to contact her or you. Upon her death however, you have been given the chance to meet the family if you wish.”

At this I looked up from the floor which I had been studying intently.

He smiled warmly at me, “Yes, they would like to meet you.”

“Great, ok. When do I get to meet the fam?” I asked letting just a touch of sarcasm into my tone.

Again, that rueful look as he continues, “It’s not quite as simple as all that.”

It is only then that I notice the briefcase he had apparently carried in with him. He picks it up from the floor beside him, sets it upon his knees and without another look at me leans over it and begins slowly turning a small brass combination lock. After a few moments, the locks on both sides of the briefcase snap open with a loud click. I watch him as he opens the briefcase, within which is a wooden box with a brass latch on it. Mr. O’Flarity picks up the box and holds it out to me. I stare at the box in his outstretched hands for a moment before leaning over from my windowsill seat and taking it from him. I place it on my lap and look back up at the wee Irish man in the expensive Italian suit who is now smiling as broadly as I have seen yet.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” he asks rather excitedly.

I look back down at the box and carefully open the latch. Lifting the lid, I gasp. Inside is a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills banded together. The band has $5,000 neatly printed on it. I glance up at Mr. O’Flarity, he nods at me as if giving me permission to reach in and count the money. I look back down at the box, lift the first group of bills out, place it on the windowsill where I sit, then the next and two more. A total of twenty thousand dollars now lies in small crisp banded stacks next to me. I look up at Mr. O’Flarity again and shrug by way of a question. He again reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a little black book and hands it to me.

“The money is yours. Should you desire to meet your family, it will take a little work on your part. Your mother kept them from you for reasons that you will learn if you choose to find them.”

“Find them?” I ask. “What do you mean, find them?”

The little man closes his briefcase with a snap and stands up. “They have all given you clues, you only need follow them. All your family would like to meet you and each one has left something that will bring you to them should you choose to spend your time, and of course the money, in the pursuit of the family. Otherwise, spend the money as you wish.”

With these words and a last smile, he turns and walks from the attic.

I start to say something before he leaves but realize that this was a dismissal and understand that no other answers will be brought forth from Mr. Ian O’Flarity.

Opening the black leather notebook to the first meticulously crafted page, I find an exquisitely detailed hand drawn map. I cannot fathom where in the world it could be located. There is absolutely no point of reference. On the next page is written a poem, quite a good poem actually, which again holds no meaning and gives no reference. Slowly going through the book page by page, I find various letters addressed to me by various people, I assume my relatives. There are other maps along with pages on which are written literal clues or riddles. There are driving instructions with no beginning or end. The most concrete things I find are a flight itinerary about one third of the way through the journal and a tour itinerary toward the end. The flight is for Egypt and the tour itinerary is in Greece.

I have begun to understand several things, my family appears large and is obviously very eccentric. If they are staying apprised of my life, then they know that I am a struggling writer. Giving me twenty thousand dollars, forces me to make a choice. Either use the money to pursue my career unencumbered for a while, or take the money and the little black book that they have used as a family journal, and go find them. Without the money it will be impossible to follow the clues that will send me across the Middle East and Europe and hopefully end in Ireland. With the money, perhaps I could be reunited with the family that my mother had chosen to flee.

The decision was finally made when I opened the last page of the journal and a small sheet of fine paper fell slowly to the ground. The paper was handmade and very old. The writing on it was my mothers. It was written in her bold script with a fine black ink.

ANNE’s TEA

Dry together

• Jasmine
• Mint
• Lemon Balm

Steep in hot, not boiling water with one teaspoon of honey and one squeeze of lemon.

• Cry into the cup.
• Pour in the tea.
• Drink away your sadness.

I turned the sheaf of paper over in my hand. Blank. Another mystery. Why was something written by my mother in the journal? Who was Anne? I knew the answers were not in this house. I put the money, the black leather notebook and Anne’s tea recipe back into the wooden box and got up to make a cup of Anne’s Tea and book a flight to Egypt.