Tea Wisdom

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for."   
 Earl Warren

This quote was on the tiny little card attached to the string on the teabag of the cup of Good Earth Original Sweet & Spicy Herbal Tea I had last night before I went to bed.  (By the way, that is a delicious flavor I discovered this spring at a stranger's house in Asheville; it is the most naturally sweet herbal tea I have ever had - a sort of spicy cinnamon flavor.  Try it.) 

But just like old Holden, I digress...

Naturally this quote appealed to me very much.  The really important things are rarely easy.  If they are, they don't mean all that much, do they?  It is interesting too, to think about all the different types of hell one might catch: there is the hell of judgement and criticism from friends, colleagues, or family.  And this can be the overt, in-your-face and on-the-table kind of thing or the slightly worse version: a quiet, creeping concern/disapproval that lingers in windowsills, gathers in corners like dust, rises and hovers like smoke, and sits patient, still, and steady just behind the eyes looking back at you.

Sometimes those eyes are even in the mirror.

Then you take a deep breath and maybe even a shower, shake up the snow globe a little and suddenly see once again all the people, places, and things you were temporarily and foolishly disregarding:

Driving through the mountains, playing in the dirt, laying it out there with the radical feminist Communist from California, jogging and talking life, love, and other, even less tangible things with the one-of-a-kind young bearded man from Georgia, lots of beer, laughs, and brunching, Contra-madness, flowers, vegetables, weeds, herbs, poison ivy, mud and sweat, harp and clay and pen, the traveling medicine show man/auctioneer/blacksmith/Japanese gardener/world-class story-teller/honorary colonel/diet soda junkie/couldn't even make this man up if you tried...too many amazing new friends to name or count or describe, a fun fling that crossed many state lines, sleeping on the ground at the house up on the hill, surprise Mama in KY, chickens, ducks, and hops in the Midwest, listening to Gogol Bordello and James Taylor in the Prius, making yogurt and becoming a coffee addict (but always good about cleaning that coffee maker!), hot tubbin' in the hoop house, driving driving driving, singing in the car, settling slowly into the best little one-room apartment in all of western North Carolina, talking about letting it all go with the kind and gentle, patient and wise, tall and handsome landlord of all landlords, on my knees with hammer and chisel laying patio stones, forays two hours east to see the Dark Princess and (finally!) eat some ethnic food, dusting books and baking cookies all winter long, cold creeks and home brews and pot-luck weddings and birds and bees, a blue heron two days in a row, stars stars stars, fireworks at the cemetery, biscuits and Brunswick Stew, too much Chinese buffet, Halloween heartbreak followed by spelunking, too many dead possums, friends friends friends...  So much more than I can even tell.

A published author!  (Links to follow.)

I can't even imagine me if I took all this away.  Nor do I want to.

And that is what I call worthwhile - catching hell, heaven, and everything in between.