A Short Tea Ceremony, Written Down

My friend Anneli came on Tuesday.

She does not drink tea. She said so at the door, and then she took her shoes off, and then she sat down on the floor cushion as if the question were closed.

I put the kettle on.

The room

The room is small and bare. A low table. Two cushions. A window with the blind half drawn. On the table, a single bowl I made in the spring, grey-green, with one lip a little higher than the other.

I do not follow the formal way. I have read about it, and I admire it from outside, the way you admire a mountain from a train. But I have borrowed its shape. A room made ready. A guest welcomed. A bowl, held in two hands.

The making

I measure the powder with a small bamboo scoop. I pour the water, not too hot, into the bowl. Then I whisk, quickly at first, until the surface turns to a fine green foam, and slowly after that, until the foam settles.

The sound of the whisk is dry and fast. It fills the room and stops. After it, the silence is a different silence. Anneli lifted her head.

The offering

I turned the bowl so its best side faced her, and placed it between us.

She picked it up. She did not know what to do with it, and I said, "Hold it however you like." She held it in both palms, as you would hold a bird, and looked down into it.

"It is very green," she said.

"It is."

She drank. I watched her face change a little, the way a face does when a taste is unexpected. She did not say whether she liked it. She set the bowl down and breathed out.

What was said

Almost nothing. We spoke for a minute about her mother's garden, and for a minute more about the rain. Then we sat. The light on the floor moved a little.

I had always thought a ceremony needed words, or at least a purpose. This had neither. It was two people in a room with a bowl between them, and a short time in which nothing needed to be accomplished.

After

I made a second bowl for myself and drank it slowly. The tea left a faint bitterness at the back of my tongue, and then a brief sweetness, and then nothing at all.

When Anneli left, she stood at the door for a moment with her shoes in her hand. "I think I might do that again," she said.

I rinsed the bowl and set it upside down to dry. It has a tiny chip now, near the foot, from where I knocked it on the sink. I have decided to leave it.

A short ceremony needs only a bowl, a guest, and a little time.