My Mother's Teashop

My Mother owns a teashop. She runs it with her smart and lovely English friend. It is perfectly situated in the only place outside of England appropriate for such a quaint little building, here in the wood and pasture town my father lovingly calls, The Shire. From their house I drive uphill by The Academy - the two-hundred-and-eight-year-old town high school that's made up of five or six free standing buildings arranged around a quad on the hilltop overlooking miles of forested rolling hills. The hills light on fire with the bright oranges yellows and reds of autumn every year.
Then I drive down again by the small brick town hall and firehouse and through the town's only red, yellow, and green traffic light. On the right I pull into the rectangular gravel and sand parking lot and enter the tiny, dark wooden building with a hedged-in wooden patio.

Inside, my mother hands me a British candy and I find my father sitting in the far end of the dining room around the corner to my right where eight tables dressed in chintz cloth and topped with silver and china bowls of sugar cubes form two rows. The walls behind the counter are lined with jars of teas. There must be a hundred of them. Black teas green teas flavored teas herbal teas. I can have any of them. Next to the counter is a display case full of pastries, pies, muffins, and scones. Savory and sweet, they all look fantastic. I don't eat them because pastries make me feel too full.

At the table my father and I talk about him driving into town and me cleaning my room. An article about Spanish wine and then the wines we drank on an Island in Greece. The menu is full of English sandwiches, cakes, and pies. Old women at the other tables talk about the great taste of their tea and the pretty arrangement of food on their plates. The waitress brings our soups - vichy soisse for the elder and gazpacho for the homesick youth. My mother makes the best gazpacho I've had, in this country or abroad. As I finish, some young girls sit next to us and enthusiastically ruminate over the different menu options. I lean over an suggest the gazpacho for anyone who likes tomatoes. They exchange strange looks, one says shes allergic, and they order scones.

After our meals, as I eat the apple and raisin cole slaw that I cannot pull my fork away from, my father watches silently. Some quiet wind and string music has filled the room throughout our pleasant lunch. The eight tables are full and the three women running the shop buzz around in and out of the kitchen and behind the register. Old people with teenage girls peek around to look for seats. My father gets up and sends me to buy some wine. Leaving the shop, I start the car and pull out onto the two-lane road and go by the dairy farm that fills the air with the sweet scent of manure that, in rural Northern Spain, reminded me of this place. As I drive slowly by cows and fields and hills and one-room bank buildings, I wonder what my life will be like years from now, when my parents are gone.