Frances Won

Daughter

There is something tragic about pouring tea. Dispensing
worth in the thickness of steam clouds and the pallor of

the tea after it settles in the porcelain. As I got older I
would automatically turn the Lazy Suzan clockwise to my

father before my mother's mother and I understood why
my own tea was darkened and selfless. Every Sunday

Confucianism became our religion—we would all go out
for dim sum and my father would order the Chrysanthemum

tea. Every Sunday, I knew precisely when to stop pouring
the tea by the number of times a bowed fist knocked the top

of the table. My father's knocks in particular. Two thumps,
clinical, scarcely a pause between each time his bent

metacarpal bones bucked the cloth covered beech wood. Those
bones that would never turn over the lid of an empty pot.