A few years ago, I gave up on one futile dream (finding true love, giving my daughter siblings to play with and all those shenanigans) - and replaced it with the more humble and doable one:
Making a pot of tea together wherever we go.
In my fantasy, we'll be going to some remote places, with these simple pieces of equipment, an open mind and a willingness to step out of our comfort zone - and brew tea for others and perhaps also be invited to their brew.
I hope we make many new friends in the process, even for just the duration of the tea party.
And if not - at least we had a heck of a good cup of tea, outdoors.

I had the teapot for a long time now. It belongs to a lost love that by now I've given up 99% of hope to ever seeing again. I think after more than a year passed since two lovers have seen of each other is time to move on. At some point, the heart does not grow fonder from absence, but simply gets used to it and tries to forget the pain of being ripped apart by life's cruel injustices. The heart needs to give itself wings to fly and grow - and get itself smashed into the rocks again by another chapter of cruelty.

But I digress.... I had a kettle that can serve as a teapot -  stainless steel and lightweight as it should be. And also with sentimental value, which is always great for an object you plan to encircle the globe with. But I had no way to heat it up. I'm just take on the characteristics of a clueless chick when it comes to anything hardware or that remotely resembles camping-gear. For that reason alone, perhaps it is good that I met someone new to break my heart. We had a few outdoors tea parties together and I realized those portable little gas burners needn't be heavy nor complicated to operate, so I quickly acquired one for myself while my heart was still bleeding. Because of course I wanted nothing more in the world than to brew a pot of tea outdoors like he did for me. Apparently I'm the kind of masochist that likes to remind herself for as long as possible of the person that she should really forget about immediately.

Did I digress again? Sorry. It's all part of making the point that my repeatedly broken heart brings me eventually to the conclusion that really all I can do about it is make tea. I am a fully capable adult, I've accomplished plenty of things in my life, mostly all by myself,  including raising a child, which is probably the most challenging thing do to solo - and I'm pretty proud of it. The thing with relationships, is that you can't do them all by yourself. There is always another person involved, and that usually wrecks everything. I mean - the success of such operation is only 50% dependent on what I do or say, and 50% is entirely up to another person. Which so far hasn't really proven to be all that great... Maybe it's even worse than that: it's only third my responsibility, third the other person's, and another big third is left to chance/luck/serendipity/divine providence - call it whatever you like, it's something we have zero control over.

So here I am, finally hanging the towel and admitting I just can't do this. Especially not the heartbroken phase. It's just too painful, thankyouverymuch. Instead, I'm going to travel the world with my little girl (who is quite grown up now and loves to travel way more than I do), and on the way we're going to stop in places and make tea. Whomever is going to join us or interact with us is welcome to do so. And I hope we'll also be invited to a bunch of tea parties along the way. Our first destination is the area of Mt. Hermon where we set off for a little weekend adventure. And what we brewed and drank there I will tell you in the next few posts...