Reading Tea Leaves

While watching an Argentinian movie (English sub-titles) a scene was presented which brought back some very old memories. The scene involved a woman asking a man visiting in her home if she could read his tea leaves. He agreed, and she asked him to finish his tea, put the saucer over the cup, invert the two together, and let it drain. After a while she looked into the cup to read what the pattern of the tea leaves told her. He sat calmly while she mentioned a few things. One of the things she mentioned was that his life was going to change for the better. And, indeed it did. That scene pushed directly into my long range memory. My Father would sometimes read my Mother's tea leaves after the end of dinner. In the late thirties and early forties tea was made by dropping an amount of loose tea into a tea pot, allowing it to steep, and then the host would pour it into tea cups. There were always tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. If you drained the cup, while drinking, tea leaves would enter the mouth. It was customary to consume down to very low in the cup and leave some roiled tea in the cup so as not to contend with the leaves. Lipton and his bags changed all this. My Father would turn the cup in his hands and contemplate the tea leaf pattern, sometimes tilting the cup for better lighting, or different perspective. I recall one time he told my Mother: "You will be receiving a letter." Her response surprised me because I took this as a parlor game my Mother and Father played. She asked: "What is it about? When will it get here? Did somebody die?" The questions surprised me because this revealed that she was taking this seriously, which I, in my ten year old wisdom, did not. He merely looked serious and indicated that was all he could see. Intrigued, I asked my Father to show me where it told him that. He showed me a very small bit of leaf that was removed from the rest of the group at the bottom of the cup. He said it was travelling toward the larger group and was therefore a letter. Curiously, my Mother did not ask to see this evidence. The manner my Father used in searching the cup, and hesitating trying to find something to say, indicated to me that it was all hokum. My Mother had a sharp intellect and I could not understand her irrational interest. They played this game for a number of years, perhaps remembering their parents or grandparents playing the same game. My spinster aunt, Vonna, once asked my Father to read her tea leaves. I recall the ceremony being more elaborate for this reading. She made sure she had sufficient leaves in her cup, sat directly across from him, lifted the inverted cup from the saucer and handed it to him in the most serious manner. She was barely breathing while waiting for my Father to begin. She was shocked when my Father told her she would soon meet the man she would marry. This greatly troubled her as she was resigned to remaining unmarried. (Many people at this time did not get married because there was a world wide depression and few could afford marriage.) Within a few days she did meet the man she married. Vonna acclaimed my Father's talent far and wide, bringing him notoriety and requests for a reading, but he never was able to nail it so well again.