NONFICTION  -
​  with a focus on food
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Tea Time
by Maria-Teresa Poblete

A week after I turned five, on our first day of kindergarten, most children were crying. They had a hard time separating from their parents, but when my parents dropped me off and left, I felt as if I had just arrived at a party. I looked around and saw a very thin girl in a wheelchair. She had suffered from polio. The boys were rowdy, although Miss Marilou, our teacher, had a good grasp on the group, keeping us entertained and distracted with a map of the world and fun questions. A pretty Basque girl knew all the answers, or maybe she was just the one who dared to respond. A shy girl with worn clothes and unkempt hair looked scared. My parents had given me a beautiful pencil sharpener in the shape of a phone. It made some kids interested, and they stopped crying.
 
As weeks, and months went by, the teachers devised games and activities for us to interact, play and dance with each other. Certain groups formed. Nancy, the shy girl with the light brown curly hair was always by herself. One day she asked me to play marbles in the yard during break. When she squatted, I noticed her clothes needed mending. I wanted to brush her hair, give her new clothes, but I knew it wasn’t possible. I wanted her as my little sister.
 
Sometimes her mother would pick her up. Most mothers looked young and modern. Her mother looked tired, tall, and thin. Her clothes hung loose on her body. They lived up the road from our home, on a shady beautiful avenue called Christopher Columbus. We lived on Amerigo Vespucci. One afternoon after school, her mother asked me to join them for tea time.
 
We walked to her home. The house was old fashioned, brown, dark, and sad. Her mother had set up a beautiful table with old china for tea. I could tell that the lacework on the tablecloth had been carefully done by hand. The jams and marmalades were delicious, the bread was dark and wholesome, and they spoke German to each other.
 
As her mother approached me to pour the tea into my delicate teacup, the sleeves from her brown cardigan were pulled up, and then I saw the faded bluish dark ink with the numbers and a letter on her forearm. I never forgot her name, and my life has been richer by playing marbles with Nancy.​
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria-Teresa Poblete is a long time, passionate Marin resident with a sense of joie-de-vivre. She loves to hike, meet interesting people and the planet, which she’s done in decades of extensive travel and work in six continents in five languages. Although she is a foreigner in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language—she enjoys learning new things with great motivation and enthusiasm. She volunteers at different film festivals and exhibits in San Francisco and Marin. For the past three years, she has come to life with OLLI classes and meetings. Recently, she has been invited to join the Advisory Council at OLLI Dominican.
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​Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to the Vistas & Byways  volunteer staff.