I'm Left to Wonder

We went to a tea store yesterday.  It smelled of weird fruit concoctions and other strange scents, but it didn't smell like tea.  There was almost no black tea available.  It was so different from the tea stores in England; that have shelves and shelves of black tea and china teapots and tea cups and saucers.  That are run by lovely ladies with british accents.

I've been drinking a lot of tea lately. Early morning cups of Earl Grey, late night cups of African Rooibos, and even some of the 1886 blend that I brought home from England.  Tea is like liquid memory for me, because when I drink it transports me back to Cambridge and the evening I arrived, when I drank my first cup of British tea.  To the only time I've ever gone to Starbucks, and to the evenings sitting by the fireplace playing with Miranda. To the little shop we went to in Oxford where we grabbed a cup right before we had to get on the bus back to Cambridge and I burnt my tongue trying to drink it all in time. The first time I had scones and the day we went to London and even that last day in England when I drank 4 cups because I might never drink tea in Britain again.

But it doesn't just remind me of England.  It reminds me of winter and Lord of the Rings and bad days and good days and every time I've ever had it.  All wrapped up in the smell and the taste.

I love photographing flowers.  Yes, you already know that.  When I grow up I want a garden where everything fits together and looks right together. One that you can walk through, down a dirt path, and maybe there's a bench somewhere in the middle where you can sit and read or just look around you.

Colour and centre and favourite and theatre and grey look so much more sophisticated than their American counterparts. I would use them all the time, except fighting autocorrect and spellcheck isn't a battle I particularly want to wage.  It's not worth it, but every time I come across them I reconsider my decision.

British accents are the most natural thing in the world.  I've heard them ever since I was really little, from listening to The Chronicles of Narnia or The Hobbit on tape read by British men and women, to watching Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and let's face it, any one is a whole lot more awesome if they have a British accent. All my favorite actors and actresses and authors are British.  And what's more- we all know full well that if there really were Hobbits or Elves they would live in England.  There's just no denying it.

So between the tea and the gardens and the accents and the scones and the spellings and the authors and just everything about this country, all I'm left to wonder is...

Why wasn't I born British?