HIgh tea, of sorts

Instead of writing the Great American novel, this morning you would have found me in the kitchen making finger sandwiches. Now I’ve been to high tea—notably at The Adolphus Hotel in Dallas--and I know how fingers sandwiches should look. My cucumber, chive, cream cheese ones did not look that neat—they kept falling apart. When my children were little I used to make two or three kinds of sandwiches and cut them into finger sandwiches, so each child could have several choices. Colin had a fondness for cream cheese and mayonnaise until a friend said, “Colin, it doesn’t have any flavor.”

 

Some of the sandwiches I made this morning were for little boys—peanut butter and honey. But I was really trying to make nice, ladylike ones. Jordan informed me a couple of weeks ago she had invited my back-fence neighbor and her two boys for tea in the garden and promptly began digging out some of my mom’s fancy dishes I never use. I try to go along with most of Jordan’s schemes, so I went shopping yesterday for just the right bread (Pepperidge Farm thin sliced), whipped cream cheese spread, pimento cheese, trail mix and amaretto-coated pecans. I mean, if we’re going uptown, we’re going to do it right.

Jordan laid out trays, dishes, etc. and had everything ready last night. After school, Jacob did a check of the back yard for dog poop. “Did she poop?” he asked. Since he hadn’t checked in three days, I told him I was pretty sure she had. Then we rushed through his homework.

Tea turned out not to be quite as elegant as I’d hoped. Jordan and Elizabeth said it was awfully hot outside for hot tea, so we sat in the playroom, with three boys yelling and screaming around us, riding a trike for which the are far too old and which desperately needs WD-40 to quiet it. We had one bloody nose that entailed a lot of wailing and screaming and apparently quite a bit of blood. But it was fun. Over the noise we managed to visit and talk about first grade and homework and the end of school and other things. I’ll rethink the event for another time.

Jordan helped me clean up, and we sat in the yard for a glass of wine. Maybe high tea isn’t our cup of tea. Guess what I had for supper? Yes, finger sandwiches. They were pretty darn good.