You know what people don’t drink at a tea and cocktail party? Tea. At least not honey vanilla chamomile hot herbal tea. Tea that would have been served from a borrowed teapot and in my china teacups.

I’ve never used those teacups. As I unwrapped them from  newspapers and hand-washed them, I felt like I was playing dress-up.  Grown-ups use china. How is it that, at 40, I still don’t feel like a grown-up?

There I was with my teacups and saucers, my platters for heart-shaped butter cookies and fruit, running around to finish cleaning the house before people arrived. (One of my favorite parts of hosting parties is that the house gets so much cleaner than normal.)But once the countertops are cleared you can really see the not-even-mustard yellow laminate countertops. Then I neeeded tablecloths because the china was too pretty for the counters. 

If I actually did things like have tea parties more often, maybe I would think of tablecloths far enough ahead of time to wash them so they wouldn’t be wrinkled.

None of the people I hang out with host tea parties either (that I know of), so maybe I just need practice. Or, I will serve tea in coffee cups next time, like I would at a potluck or playdate and sell off the china because I don’t think it’s dishwasher safe, and I felt nervous just laying it out on the counter.

No one drank tea anyway. Well, they drank blueberry iced tea served out of a plastic pitcher. And they drank cosmopolitans–pink drinks for our I Am My Own Valentine tea and cocktail party. I hosted the party for some women from my divorce class figuring we all divorced our Valentines so the party would be a great way to celebrate who we didn’t lose, who, actually, many of us are getting back now that we are divorced.

I got the idea from a collage I started on New Year’s Eve.  I put I Am on the top left hand corner and then found adjectives that describe me or words that I would like to describe me like whole, confident, serene, and renowned. I’d planned to finish the collage on New Year’s Day when my friend Gray and I got together to collage vision boards. I’ve been working on it ever since.

Even though I didn’t drink tea out of my teacups either, (yes, I drank cosmopolitans too), I did clean my house, hang out with some incredible women, and I finished my collage.

I’m learning how to treat my Valentine kindly. Now, I’ve got to go hand wash some china platters.