The Tea Maker
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/opinion/08ono.html
By YOKO ONO
Published: December 7, 2010
JOHN and I are in our Dakota kitchen in the middle of the night.
Three cats Sasha, Micha and Charo are looking up at John, who is
making tea for us two.
Sasha is all white, Micha is all black. They are both gorgeous,
classy Persian cats. Charo, on the other hand, is a mutt. John used
to have a special love for Charo. "You've got a funny face, Charo!"
he would say, and pat her.
"Yoko, Yoko, you're supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then
the hot water." John took the role of the tea maker, for being
English. So I gave up doing it.
It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no
sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. One night,
however, John said: "I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and
she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea
bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but ..."
"So all this time, we were doing it wrong?"
"Yeah ..."
We both cracked up. That was in 1980. Neither of us knew that it was
to be the last year of our life together.
This would have been the 70th birthday year for John if only he was
here. But people are not questioning if he is here or not. They just
love him and are keeping him alive with their love. I've received
notes from people in all corners of the world letting me know that
they were celebrating this year to thank John for having given us so
much in his 40 short years on earth.
The most important gift we received from him was not words, but
deeds. He believed in Truth, and had dared to speak up. We all knew
that he upset certain powerful people with it. But that was John. He
couldn't have been any other way. If he were here now, I think he
would still be shouting the truth. Without the truth, there would be
no way to achieve world peace.
On this day, the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the
night we both cracked up drinking tea.
They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many
teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly
teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.
--
Yoko Ono is an artist.
.
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