I need a cup of tea

I need someone to make me a cup of tea. My late great-aunt Kay was famous for that -- if anything went wrong in any of her nieces' lives, she would make us a cup of tea, lots of milk, lots of sugar, and listen to us cry while she called us her "little angels". She didn't have any children but she felt a little bit like a grandmother to all of us. My real grandmothers weren't around -- my mother's mother died when I was little, my father's mom wasn't really into being anyone's grandma.

Aunt Kay was the perfect grandma -- she remembered every birthday, every event in our lives, with a card and a folded up $20 bill. She knew all of our likes and dislikes, remembered all the highlights of our collective childhoods, and her arrival on holidays was what everyone waited for. The cups of tea were the most memorable though -- she gave all of us milked-down tea starting when we were toddlers. It takes a lot of patience to sit with children, drinking tea, listening to them babble on about school and their friends, while simulatenously teaching them the intricacies of 500 rummy. But she did it. And, when we got older, and she had to hear us make the same mistakes over and over, listen to our surprised tears when the boy she knew would break our hearts, did, in fact, do just that, she never said, "I told you so". That's no small feat.

To this day, whenever my life takes a hard left, I feel the urge for a cup of tea and I miss Aunt Kay. I wish I could have a cup of tea and hand of cards with her right now. Surprisingly enough, the tea is the hardest part -- I can never can get the milk-to-sugar ratio right, the way she made it.