Lipton

Southern gals love their iced tea. I mean really, really love their iced tea. I haven’t had an excellent glass of iced tea since I was fourteen. After my grandmother passed, the sugar to boiled water to steeping time ratio was never the same.

When we get together for the holidays now, my cousin always tries to make tea in her fancy machine, but it’s never quite the same. Tea machines don’t require the gentle pulling of the yellow and white Lipton paper tabs that then get stuck to your finger tips. Tea machines don’t require the finesse of the knot that holds all of those precious sacks together as they lay waiting to reach their full potential. Waiting for the done light on a tea machine is never as much fun as watching water change from glassy and still, to highly agitated by tiny bubbles rapidly maneuvering to the surface, to giant pockets of air rumbling and falling over themselves like thousands of salmon trying to spawn.

It really was all about the sugar, though. Mounds and mounds of beautiful, processed sugar that streamed into the pitcher without concerning itself with our family history of diabetes and weight problems. Ah the sugar-before we knew of things like Splenda and agave nectar and Fair Trade Turbinado Unrefined Cane Sugar from Central Market. It was just sugar. The clearest picture I have of my grandmother is her sitting in her brown recliner, waiting for me to come in to visit. She would see me, her face would light up, and she would take her huge, only slightly wrinkled hand and smooth it from the tip of her nose to the tip of her chin. I like to think that she was wiping her mouth in preparation for my kiss because her lips were too coated in sugar from all that yummy tea. The only thing in the world that was sweeter than that tea was her.