A cuppa is a magical space portal that leads to home

Rituals, travel, and the present moment

Years ago, I read in Thich Nhat Hanh or some other essay on mindfulness the phrase, “Come home to the present moment,” and I had no idea what that might mean.

I mean, I understood what home was or at least I thought I did. I am a big fan of coming home. It’s my favorite place to be. I’ve always been a home-body. As a child and a teenager, I made up elaborate excuses to avoid going to sleepovers, which were, let’s admit it, terrifying. Having to spend a whole night away from home, with the possibility that someone would put your hand in cold water while you slept to make you wet the bed or force you to channel the dead with a game of light as a feather, stiff as a board? No, thank you.

Also, yes, I still sometimes come up with excuses not to go places, even though so far no one has made me play light as a feather, stiff as a board as an adult. My husband and I have pulled the plug on trips, damn the consequences, because leaving the house felt like entirely too much effort.

I can admit that is good to leave your house sometimes. It’s good to see people who perhaps lives too far away to visit you in your own home. It’s good to go other places and see different things. It’s definitely good to eat yummy food and drink amazing cocktails, both of which have been made by someone else, with no dishes to clean up afterward. Let us cede that, at least for me, leaving home is sometimes desirable, if also fraught. How, then, do you take home with you? And what does it have to do with the present moment?

When we’re younger, we take home with us in the form of favorite stuffed animals or security blankets. As I got older, maybe it was my Walkman or cd player. Music and books are nice portable forms of home. Also a notebook to write in. Maybe having a stuffed animal at 50 isn’t the worst idea, especially given what I’ve been learning about play lately.

I was in my forties when I got a little closer to understanding that phrase about coming home to the present moment. I bought a travel yoga mat and was staying in a hotel somewhere by myself. I laid the yoga mat out on the floor and did a couple of cat-cow’s and child’s pose. I felt, suddenly, that sweet sense of calm and contentment that comes from being home.

I felt like I was home not because the yoga mat itself was a physical representation of home. It’s not even the mat I use when I’m home, because, you know, it’s the travel mat. It didn’t smell like home or feel like home, though full disclosure, it might have had a few cat hairs on it. What made it home was doing the yoga itself. By taking that ritual and the ability to do that ritual with me on the road, I carried a little bit of home with me.

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

I thought about that yoga mat again this afternoon as I was making a cup of tea in a place that is also far from home. The tea I’m using is not exactly the same nor are the cups. I had to look long and hard to find the sugar in an unfamiliar kitchen, a kind of sugar which is also different from what I use at home.

Still, there’s a ritual to making tea that translates well across time and place. Listening to the soft rumbling sound the water makes as it begins to boil. Pouring it into your cup. Watching the steam rise and breathing in the smell of the leaves as they steep. Pulling out the bag, wrapping the string around the spoon to drain every bit of tea out before tossing it away. Enjoying the tinkling sound of the spoon as you stir to make sure the sugar is all dissolved. Waiting for the tea to cool enough to drink, the cup cradled in your hands to feel the warmth. Closing your eyes when you take the first sip and, like magic, you are home.

The ritual of tea brings me into the present moment, but that present moment is a vast space, one that contains all the times I’ve made tea at home, as well. The ritual itself becomes a place in which to dwell. A place to feel safe and comfortable and cared-for. A place to feel at home, if I can just make myself pay attention.

Come home to the present moment. When I read that phrase all those years ago, I didn’t understand what it meant, but I so wanted to. It sounded like such an amazing possibility. Yes, I thought, I would like to be able to be home all the time. I would like to live in that space of ease and peace that coming home suggests. I would like to build that home inside myself. Which is all exactly as hard and easy as making a cup of tea.

This post is for Joe, who was worried about whether I’d be writing a post this week from the road and just knowing that sort of made me feel like I’d made it onto the New York Times list of the best books of the 21^st century. Also, fuck that list. Also, Joe is a real person and not someone I made up, I swear.