Welp. By the time I managed to dig out these pics, a new prompt from the wonderful Cinammon Cup Coffee has come out. Yet, I've spent the past week looking for these, so here we are. Last week, the community was talking about special teahouse memories, and that theme really spoke to me.
There's a teahouse a couple blocks from my house, in this wonderful, residential area of the neighborhood, situated inside the garden of an old townhouse. It's called Infinitea, and it's right behind where my friends and I went to school. Let me tell you, we were real proud we got the pun. Ah, to be 12 again.
More like 15 here.
This particular teahouse was a staple growing up, not just because of the lush greenery, or the pretty interior decor, but because of what it meant to us. Given that we all lived on the same general neighborhood, this was the hangout place. It's where we first got to play grown-ups, because it was one of the fairly few places we were allowed to be alone in. To go without supervision.
The delicious cakes and tortes helped, certainly.
It was a place to grow up in. To feel grown-up in. And it was slightly before Instagram and social media were a thing, or maybe we were just late in adopting it, I'm not sure. But most of our outings were picture-free. No "Wait, I'm snapping a picture". Just good ole dig in.
Turns out I always had a thing about hiding in greenery.
Growing up here was also a thing of culinary beauty. When we were kids, again, there wasn't that much focus on social media, as there is now. So we got most of our cooking ideas (my friend and I enjoyed baking from a young age, I guess) from our outings.
It was here we first sampled carrot cakes, and cheese cakes. It was also here, I think, we first got a whiff of fancier, creamy chocolate cakes, not the spongy, overly-sweet variety we'd previously known. It was, as they say, an education.
That's Bob Dylan on my shirt. Running back through these has been such a fun chance for introspection, and revisiting my 15/16 year old self.
But time passes. We grew up, and slowly moved from being kids and thinking it was oh so fancy and mature coming out here. We didn't ditch the place, though.
I was 17. My hair was blue, and phone cameras were crap.
The place moved from being a fancy hangout to being a minimal effort get-out for when we hadn't planned anything better. I took my best friend out here for her 18th birthday, since nothing special was going on, and she was kinda down. It was a place to observe so much of our life.
I had my first date here. So did my best friend. I still have the little heart-shaped note that came with our tea. It reads "Fairytale Autumn". I took it as a sign at the time, even as my date didn't know we were on one.
We haven't been there a while. A few years. I meant to revisit this week, thinking about this prompt, but the weather's just been a real killer, so maybe when it cools down a bit. Autumn, maybe.
Thanks to @cinccf for this trip down memory lane :)
