A Tale of Two Kettles

 A Tale of Two Kettles

My good aunt gave us an electric kettle when we visited her several years ago. Until that point, although I knew such conveniences existed, we never owned one. If I wanted tea, I merely popped a bag in a favorite mug with water, placed it into the microwave and hit the ‘hot drink’ button. My gods, what savages we were back then.

The gift came as a response to my surprise at her own electric kettle, which boiled water in moments and produced an exceptionally hot and delicious cup of Earl Grey tea. Perhaps realizing that we needed to step into the modern world, she had a brand new kettle awaiting us on our bed in the spare room in her house the day we departed. Micki, who is our family's stowage and packing genius, cleverly placed the box within her expandable carry-on bag and we gratefully bid the blood relative adieu and flew home.

The next summer, we flew across the Atlantic to visit Micki's relatives in Liverpool. As much as I profess to be an anglophile, I ought to have expected them to have an electric kettle, but I was still pleasantly surprised. Micki and her cousin primarily drank coffee, but his wife and I drank good “proper English tea” and I'm pretty sure my fondness for the strong and bitter brew truly began when we returned to their house after a long day of strolling and sightseeing for a cup of the refreshing liquid.

The kettle that my good aunt gave us resided in a place of honor on our counter. It got a lot of use until we had our kitchen redone. Then, it went over to a section of the house that had been a mother-in-law suite but had since morphed into a makeshift apartment and storage for our boys. Somewhere during that period, I'm sorry to say, someone decided to boil something in the kettle that wasn't water or possibly even liquid. The downstairs kids did try to clean it, but it had been ruined beyond repair. I didn’t find out until later because I had a nice new kettle that matched our new kitchen's aesthetic. When I did find out that it was gone, I was irked—it had been a gift after all—but it was too late by then.

Time passes and people change, our habits shift, hopefully we improve and become a little more stable. Unlike when my aunt gave us our first kettle, I now mainly imbibe tea. It has become a fact of my existence and I'm never without my vacuum sealed, spill proof cup that keeps the brew hot as poured for hours. My coworkers are aware of my tea habit and often remark about the cup that is forever by my side. For the last few years, I have boiled enough water to fill the big lake upon which my father's sister’s city dwells. I have drunk enough Earl Grey, green, English Breakfast, peppermint, chamomile, lemon ginger, Irish Breakfast and oolong tea, and heaven knows what else, to keep an entire city of stout English laborers on their feet for years on end. Every morning, so long as the power is on, I have switched on our trusty electric kettle to boil water for both Micki's French pressed coffee and to fill up my cup of hot squash. It’s important to have a routine.

At work, my tea-drinking colleagues and I even prevailed upon our business manager to get an excellent electric kettle for the staff lounge. At first, we were the only users, but as time has ticked by, more and more people started to use the work kettle for their afternoon spot of tissue restoring oolong or rooibos.

During the lead up to a much covered winter storm, I dashed off to the super store, not for milk or bread, but to get a traditional kettle for our gas stove top because the power was forecast to be out due to downed branches and slick conditions. Electricity be damned. I must have my tea. I cannot express how spoiled I have become by modern convenience that the thought of being parted from my electric kettle and the ability to quickly boil water makes me feel positively apocalyptic.

Last year, for Father's Day, I was given the best treasure a tea aficionado could ever get: a portable electric tea kettle. This marvel of the modern era folds down nearly flat, but can pop up like a silicone accordion and boil water in a flash. Until then, when we went on vacation or to stay with family (especially those who didn’t have one), we brought our electric kettle with us. It's first audition—at our summer vacation beach condo rental with the whole family in July—the little kettle did great service and became the favorite of all the tea lovers in our family, especially our daughter-in-law who was pregnant and unpleasantly nauseous during that part of the year. Ginger tea soothed her unhappy tummy. The rest of us found it useful to make tea, but also hot water for ramen noodles or to add anti-bacterial steam to the after-dinner dish soak.

Expecting their wee daughter in the late fall, the middle kids had us come up a few times to help move furniture and prepare their mountain home for the incoming bairn. I was shocked that they were still using a Pyrex measuring cup to heat up water for their tea. This couldn't be borne. So when it came to deciding what to get them for Christmas, the answer was a “no-brainer”. A flowery kettle now resides on their counter providing 1.7 liters of boiling water for tea.

This year for an early Valentine’s Day gift to each other, we decided that, though our trusty little kettle had served the family's needs quite well, it was time for a new, bigger electric kettle. After all the research we had done for the kids, it was easy to provide a list of basic functions that we found desirable. Of course we wanted a kettle with a larger capacity, but also varied temp levels, a keep warm function and perhaps something that did its work at lower decibels (our former kettle had a loose cork handle on the top lid that rattled when the water began to roll, driving our cats and their owners a bit mad with the jangling).

We found one to our liking that met all our requirements with a price tag that was also quite agreeable. It now adorns the part of our countertop where our trusty (and noisy) old kettle sat for years. That old friend has been moved over to the former mother-in-law suite where it will hopefully not be used to boil pudding or whatever. That space which became the apartment-ish dwelling of our youngest and his partner now stands empty after their departure into the wide world of life. Though it is in need of a good cleaning, our little kettle will rest in semi-retirement, standing in as understudy for when visitors come to see us for a weekend and want tea (of which there is no lack in our home).

It's funny that I feel somewhat sad about this new state of affairs. I love our new kettle. Yet, I feel sort of guilty at moving our old one out of regular duty. I'm fascinated by how we think of the things we own as if they had feelings. We become so emotionally attached to items we use regularly. Sometimes, like with the original electric kettle given to us by my aged ancestor, I bubble with a bit of fury when I think someone scorched something in it in much the same way I might rage if someone dented my car or tagged the side of our house with badly scrawled invective. The old kettle will help to fill the pail with hot water, when I go over there to scrub the floors, I guess.

I try to remember that, perhaps more valuable than the kettle itself, is the understanding of how important it has become to our lifestyle. I'm afraid we're kettle proselytizers, bringing the gospel of electrically boiled hot water and good tea to our kids and our friends and whoever will listen. It is part of who we are now, and I like that about us. We could be sharing worse things.

Although I didn't initially remember it, my father reminded me that my grandmother had a plug-in kettle which she used to boil water for her wash up after dinner and to make tea and sometimes instant coffee for when we sat around the kitchen table eating homemade pie or cake. My other grandmother had a gas stovetop like we do, and she always had a glass kettle on the boil. I sort of feel like the period we didn't have a kettle I was letting our side down, but I think we've made up for any lapses of judgment now. We stand in good stead as dutiful electric kettle owners and avid aficionados of hot drinks, both of the tea and coffee variety.

As I write this I am sipping Irish Breakfast Tea and glancing at the clock. Soon it will be time to refresh my steaming cuppa and so I'm going to walk over to our new kettle, tap the fancy light-up display, select ‘boil’ and watch the temp creep up with the interest of a scientist monitoring an experiment. This kettle is third generation, much as I am a third generation (finally) kettle owner, thanks to the generous gift of my favorite family member. It may not seem like a big deal, but I’m glad that we’re electric kettle people and I owe it to her for getting us aboard that train.