The Teacup Without a Mate

In this episode, I share an original story called The Teacup Without a Mate.

A little girl reaches for a beautiful teacup she was never meant to touch. What follows is a tender story about childhood, mistakes, forgiveness, and the treasures we sometimes protect so carefully that we forget to enjoy them.

About These Stories

I write stories, reflections, and imagined entire worlds! Some are arguably true, some suspiciously borrowed from memory, some robustly exaggerated, and some entirely made up from the pure delight of imagining, capturing whatever is persisting stubbornly enough that I simply cannot ignore it any longer.

More writing, reflections, and audio pieces live at easterellen.com.

What is Easter Ellen?

Welcome. I’m Easter Ellen.

I write stories, reflections, and imagined entire worlds. Some are arguably true, some are suspiciously borrowed from memory, some are robustly exaggerated, and some are made up entirely from the pure delight of imagining.

Mostly, I write what persists stubbornly enough that I can no longer ignore it.

If you enjoy these pieces, subscribe so you do not miss the next one.

You can find more of my writing, reflections, audio pieces, and creative work at easterellen.com.

You can also find me on YouTube at EasterEllen, where I share longer stories, thoughts, and conversations about change, choice, self-trust, and moving forward.

Easter Ellen: 00:00

Hi, welcome to Easter Ellen. Today's piece is called Teacup Without a Mate. It had been my nana's. It sat there with its delicate pale floral panels, its fine sage vines and its tiny delicate leaves. It was so dainty and so lovely.

Easter Ellen: 00:21

I looked at it and I looked at it. I remembered the way that my Nana used to drink tea with me. She made such a big deal about it. Her head swiss tree was British, so tea was the thing for her. She would show me all of her beautiful teacups stored behind the special glass cupboard.

Easter Ellen: 00:45

Her hands would almost tremble because she loved them that much. I knew not to dare ask ever touch even one of them. Dare, dare, dare not ask. My fumbling little seven year old fingers were definitely not something I would trust either. Way too much energy, way too much clumsiness, and not enough age to even begin to respect how very special they were to her.

Easter Ellen: 01:14

But somehow I knew. We always had tea together, but never with the special, special cups. The special, special, special teacups just sat in their glass cupboard. Always beautiful. Always perfect.

Easter Ellen: 01:30

Always untouched. I used to think to myself that it was such a shame because they were the really pretty ones and why didn't she ever use them if she loved them so much? It just didn't make sense to seven year old me. One day she left me with grandpa while she went to get her hair done as she did every Saturday. Getting your hair styled once a week was a normal thing then.

Easter Ellen: 01:58

All of her friends did the same thing. Quite honestly, her hair looked great for a nanny kind of great from Saturday all the way through to Tuesday. By the time Wednesday hit, Nana's hair started styling itself and seemed to go in several directions at once. Sometimes it made me laugh but I'd have to hold it in and run to another room before giggling because I knew Nana would be offended. By Friday, her hair was such a disgrace, she would say, And she'd have a kerchief over her head the entire day.

Easter Ellen: 02:34

The kind of kerchief that only really old ladies wear, of course. It was just in case anybody came to the door, of course. If someone showed up she would politely answer the door sounding flustered and confused and say, Oh, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm doing my housework right now, my cleaning. I don't usually wear my hair up like this but I like I don't but I don't like to get it dirty.

Easter Ellen: 03:08

You'll excuse the way I look. You're welcome to come in, of course, But I am cleaning right now. And her voice would trail off to end the invitation that she really didn't want to extend in the first place. I could not understand grownups and how they confused even themselves. The funniest thing was that in the midst of her excuses, her shaggy voice and embarrassment over her disheveled covered hair, Her face would go 10 shades of red as she lied about why she was wearing the kerchief in the first place.

Easter Ellen: 03:54

That day grandpa was downstairs watching TV in his big lazy boy dark brown cracked leather chair. He had fallen asleep. We had pored over the Atlas together as I excitedly looked at maps and talked about different places in the world. I loved talking to grandpa because he knew so much. He had an awesome way of explaining just about anything I could ask him.

Easter Ellen: 04:23

He may have been kind of boring most of the rest of the time, but when it came to learning anything he was the guy to go to. I wandered up the parquet stairs after a little while as usual noticing how the thick dark lines were kind of loud feeling compared to the rest of the honey colored tiles. It always left me curious as to why they were so mismatched. I was feeling really bored and not really sure what I was going to do, but I felt thirsty so I headed to the kitchen. Of course Nana had plenty of apple juice there for me.

Easter Ellen: 05:01

She always did. I went to the cupboard to get a cup and there it was. The big ugly orange cup. The kind of ugly cup that was only made in the 70s. It was staring me in the face.

Easter Ellen: 05:19

I hated it. It was ugly. Really, really, really ugly. But I couldn't tell Nana that because when I was four years old orange used to be my favorite color. She had gotten it for me thinking I would be so happy to have.

Easter Ellen: 05:36

She had gotten it for me thinking I would be so happy to have my very own special orange cup. But even back then that orange was not my orange. It wasn't even close to being a nice shade of orange. It was the yuckiest orange ever. The kind of yucky orange that's almost becoming light brown that any child in their right mind would never, ever, ever, ever want.

Easter Ellen: 06:05

And I did not want it. But I also did not want to hurt Nana's feelings. She was so nice to me and even then I knew that her niceness to me meant more than how ugly that stupid cup was. I looked at it for a moment. I stared at it.

Easter Ellen: 06:26

Maybe thirty seconds before I changed my mind and closed the cupboard door And I walked into the dining room. Somehow my feet were leading me to the glass cupboard. Somehow the rest of me was following. And somehow, even though I knew that I was doing it, I was trying to convince myself that I wasn't. I thought that somehow it was something else leading me.

Easter Ellen: 06:51

Like maybe my feet had nothing to do with my thinking so therefore I was not doing what my feet So therefore I was not doing what my feet were doing as they had decided to just start walking without me deciding to tell them to. When I arrived at the cupboard, I stared at the beautiful cup with the lovely pale blue flowers, the very fine vines, and the beautiful delicate leaves set against the bone colored background with gold trim around the very top of it. I took a deep breath in and I held it. The cup was so very pretty. So very lovely.

Easter Ellen: 07:33

I couldn't touch it of course. Of course, I couldn't touch it. Just the thought of touching it would send poor Nana to the hospital with a ticker attack or whatever it was she said would happen whenever she got kerfuffled. Yet somehow, despite all of my thinking about how I could walk to where I knew I shouldn't go, despite a guilty feeling already spreading itself all over me, I found myself in front of it. The glass cupboard.

Easter Ellen: 08:06

Without a single thought or any permission at all, my hand had decided to open the sacred glass cupboard. I had not even had the chance to think to myself, Open it! I was quite surprised with myself, to be honest. How did I end up opening the cupboard door when that was exactly what I wasn't supposed to do? Well, no use in thinking about that anymore.

Easter Ellen: 08:32

It was open. But could I? Would I actually touch it for real? My fingers suddenly felt huge and clumsy. They felt fat and big like grandpa's fingers.

Easter Ellen: 08:52

But they were reaching, reaching, reaching into that cupboard. The hand attached to the fingers was a little bit shaky. The arm attached to the hand felt very, very heavy and very, very clumsy at the same time. The body behind the arm was feeling kind of stiff and guilty and wrong. The mind attached to the body attached to the arm attached to the hand attached to the clumsy fat fingers was saying, What are you doing?

Easter Ellen: 09:24

You are not supposed to do this. But then there was this other voice talking to me at the same time. Oh, it's not going to hurt. You just want to touch it. You want to see what it feels like because Nana never lets you touch them.

Easter Ellen: 09:43

You can touch it and do no harm. What's the big deal? I decided it wasn't a big deal to just touch it as long as I just touched it. And so I did. My fat little fingers felt how very, very delicate the cup with the floral pale blue panels, its fine sage vines and its tiny delicate leaves was.

Easter Ellen: 10:13

I had never touched anything so thin, so fragile feeling before. There was just something so grown up feeling in how breakable it felt. Before I knew it, my clumsy fat feeling fingers had lifted the treasured lovely cup and it was coming toward my face. What was happening? Surely I did not want to disobey Nana at all and certainly I did not want to disappoint Nana at all.

Easter Ellen: 10:48

But here it was in front of my face and I was staring at the inside of it. It had these tiny little ridges all along the inside like little bones marking the place around the circular cup. It was just so breathtaking. No wonder Nana took such special care of it. I found myself dreaming about all the different special places it could be used.

Easter Ellen: 11:14

Maybe princesses drank with cups like this. Maybe they had breakfast with queens and drank together. Or maybe special princesses in India. Or maybe special princesses in India had teacups like this. Nana called it China.

Easter Ellen: 11:33

Maybe it was for Chinese princesses. My mind played out the imagined morning tea time with princesses in exotic places sipping delicately in their frilly princess dresses with their beautiful queen mamas nodding in approval and teaching them how to be very proper, very princessy princesses. Oh, I wanted to be a proper pretty princessy princess too. I thought of all the proper pretty princess y princesses from every ethnicity and every country in the world who drank who drank out of lovely teacups just like this with its delicate floral pale with its delicate floral pale blue panels, fine sage vines, and tiny delicate leaves. How lucky they were.

Easter Ellen: 12:27

Even if they were seven years old like I was, I bet their grandmothers didn't make them drink from old orange ugly cups instead. I felt a little bit sad because I really, really wanted to drink from it. I thought about the apple juice. Then I felt a little bit angry that all the proper pretty princessy princesses in the world get to drink from lovely teacups. Well, I didn't.

Easter Ellen: 12:57

But I could if I wanted to. I shrugged my shoulders. I stuck my nose up in the air, turning to the kitchen with the cup. Why not? Just a sip.

Easter Ellen: 13:11

Just a little, little, little sip. And there were my hands attached to my arms, attached to my body, attached to my legs, attached to my feet, which were now walking a little bit shaky towards the kitchen. Oh, Nana would be so angry. I'm not going to think about that, I said to myself. I'm not going to think about how angry Nana would be.

Easter Ellen: 13:36

I'm not going to think how much I would disappoint poor Nana who loved me so much. I'm not going to think of how I was disobeying her. I'm not going to think about just how very not nice I was being, to be quite honest. Suddenly, the magic was gone. I didn't want to drink my juice anymore.

Easter Ellen: 13:58

Not from that cup, anyhow. I came to a full stop. I was still on the pale robin egg blue carpet in the dining room, and I was about two feet away from the kitchen, but my guilt was already eating me, and I just couldn't bring myself to actually go all the way into the kitchen. I felt so deflated. This wasn't fun.

Easter Ellen: 14:25

This wasn't what I had imagined. I changed my mind about the entire stupid idea of drinking out of Nana's special cup. Just as I was about to turn around and head back, I heard grandpa's voice loud and suddenly right behind me. I startled, and I shuddered. Sweet pea, what are you doing?

Easter Ellen: 14:47

If your grandmother knew you were touching her special teacup, she would have a conniption fit. I was trembling everywhere from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, the feet that had walked me to the dining room against my will and made me guilty of something I did not want to do at all. Tears rose up in my eyes. And I tried, but it couldn't stop shaking. And then it got worse.

Easter Ellen: 15:15

I don't know how, But the beautiful little cup suddenly slipped out of my trembling fingers, and the cup dropped, dropped, dropped all the way down to the plush pale robin egg blue carpet, and my little head followed as if in slow motion as I helplessly watched it fall. I felt my jaw drop because it broke. As if by black magic, the little perfect cup had suddenly become split into two halves. The beautiful, beautiful, delicate, lovely, softly colored blue floral teacup with the fine sage vines and delicate leaves sat in two jagged, sharp, angry looking pieces on the floor. I sobbed immediately.

Easter Ellen: 16:10

Grandpa might have known a lot of things, but he sure did not know what to do with his sobbing seven year old who had just completely disobeyed her Nana. Being her husband, he knew just how upset she would be. So his loyalty was torn between trying to help his little seven year old granddaughter and trying to think of just how to appease his wife's anger when she got home. Her imminent disappointment. Her inevitable, utter shock.

Easter Ellen: 16:38

He knew just how much she treasured those teacups. My body was shaking. I picked up the two little pieces of the teacup and tried to put them back together again. There was this really weird scratchy sound I'd never heard before, and I didn't like the sound of it. I was trying to put it back together, but the scratchy sound made me even more upset, as if the scratchiness whispered to me that I was a terrible granddaughter and could never fix what I had done wrong.

Easter Ellen: 17:12

I didn't know what to do to fix what I had caused. So many things were going through my head, and they were all tangled up at once. I could only cry. Every thought made me feel worse than the one before it had. Grandpa took the pieces from me and said, it's okay, sweet pea.

Easter Ellen: 17:31

Don't worry. Nana might be a little bit angry and disappointed when she gets home, but she will forgive you. You're much, much more special to her than a teacup. I went to my room still crying. I decided I wanted to write a letter for Nana, but I couldn't quite write a letter, so I wrote a story instead.

Easter Ellen: 17:56

I wrote her a story about a wicked witch who kept all her special things to herself and about a young beautiful princess who one day sneaks into the witch's home and touched her beautiful things. And when the wicked witch found out, she was very, very angry and went very, very angry, and she cursed the little beautiful princess for eternity. And the little princess was unhappy forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. The end. When Nana got home, I handed her my little story, which I thought was pretty clever, and I hoped that through my gift of a story she would see how very sorry I was for disrespecting her so badly.

Easter Ellen: 18:46

At the same time grandpa was showing her the teacup and explaining what had happened. His face turned bright red. Her face turned bright red. Her lips and her face got tight like a really weird kind of way that made me very, very upset and very, very scared at the same time. I ran back to my room and I buried my face in the pillow.

Easter Ellen: 19:14

I was so scared of how angry she was with me. I was so scared of what consequences Nana would decide for what I did. I was really, really, really ashamed of myself. I sat there in my room. After a little while, I lifted my face from my pillow.

Easter Ellen: 19:34

But I was too afraid to leave the room again. Then a few minutes later, I heard Nana. She let on a huge, huge belt of laughter that just kept going and going and going. I could tell it was the kind where she could hardly breathe. I even pictured her eyes watering up as she laughed so very hard.

Easter Ellen: 19:59

Well, at least something's made her laugh after I had done such a bad job of making her so unhappy and angry. Half a minute later, there she was at my doorway, and she's still and she was still laughing. I looked at her face and I could see that her eyes were all watery as I had imagined. Oh, no. Had I made her cry?

Easter Ellen: 20:28

She said, my darling, my darling little girl. I was so angry with you. I was so very angry with you. And then I read your story about the wicked witch and the innocent lovely little princess. I didn't know you thought of me as a wicked witch, she said, laughing harder.

Easter Ellen: 20:48

And then I felt worse. I really didn't think that Nana was evil or wicked at all. Oh, no. I made a second huge mistake. But then she smiled at me and she said, Honey, I didn't know that you thought of me as selfish and that you thought it was really mean of me to keep my things to myself.

Easter Ellen: 21:12

Do you know what? She asked. You're kind of right. I keep all my special things locked away, and I don't even let myself touch them, never mind you. She leaned in towards me and kissed me at the top of my head.

Easter Ellen: 21:28

I have an idea, honey, she said. Why don't you come with me? Why don't we have a lovely tea time, and we'll use our special, special cups? We will have special cookies and use special spoons and special plates and all the things that I keep put away behind the glass cupboard forever. We will take all of the favorites out, and we'll enjoy them today, and then we will enjoy them another day and another day.

Easter Ellen: 21:57

You are a lovely princess, and because I have been acting like a wicked witch who keeps her things away from myself and from you, I am going to make this right, and we will enjoy all the beautiful things that have been hiding away as if they were too special for my own beautiful princess to enjoy with me. Let's go, she said. It's tea time. And now, years later, I still enjoy the treasure of the partner of that beautiful cup, the delicate one with the pale blue flowers, the fine sage vines, and the tiny delicate leaves. It is so lovely.

Easter Ellen: 22:38

Like my nana used to, I keep all my special things behind a cupboard with a glass vase. But when my twin granddaughters come to visit, I take out my nana's special cup with all the rest of my special China, silver, and lovely things, and I make our favorite teas with special occasion cookies and delicate, proper, princessy, pretty, special things. And always, I take one minute, I close my eyes, I think of Nana, and I smile.