She drinks tea like I drink water.

For as long as I can remember, my mother's presence and activities in the house have been marked by the location of her tea pot. She used to carry it around on a worn-down wooden serving tray that bore traces of green and orange paint and was filled with tea lights and other trinkets. In between the candy wrappers and the used matches you'd find tiny notepads, pens, paper scraps, coins, toothpicks and, if you were lucky, a small piece of chocolate [...]