Today was the  Jane Austen tea. My first time costuming since the Victorian Stroll. First time blogging in three months.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, but it’s taken the form of a firehouse of grief and anger at my representatives. I haven’t had anything left for this space. But I’ve been thinking about when and how to drop back in, and here I am today, for better or worse.

Perhaps the most important thing about the tea is that I was on time. I harp a lot about time on this blog, because I suffer from time blindness. I say suffer, but really I don’t mind that much except for those wild moments when I’m mad that I’m late and also incapable of doing anything about it due to time activating my fight/flight/freeze response.

I was going about my business and all of a sudden I looked at the clock and it was time to leave and I was still in my regular clothes.

Past Laura had my historical duds more or less already laid out, and the pieces that weren’t out were easy to find. I’m much faster at getting dressed than I used to be, and I don’t get stuck on stuff like which necklace and which stockings.

Here’s the fashion plate for the color inspo:You can barely see it peeking out in one of the pics below, but my orange silk reticule hit that citrus accent the yellow/green bits serve on the shawl in the fashion plate. You can see the reticule better in this post. I also wore an ocean jasper necklace. I don’t think the mottled Frog and Toad colors of the necklace are historically accurate, but I do not care.

The white short gown I’m wearing is new to you. I made it for the Jane Austen retreat in 2022 and wore it but got zero photos in it. The short gown is based on this painting of two Caribbean seamstresses:I used Fig Leaf Patterns 219 with white cotton batiste.

I finally got to use the keffiyeh turban idea I’ve had since December. That time, I was foiled when that first keffiyeh didn’t arrive in time for me to wear it. The Universe was with me this time as I wrapped my keffiyeh around my head just before swirling out the door. It’s not often that I attempt a turban right before leaving and have success the first try. On most occasions, “more haste, less speed” proves true.

My twelve year old son took photos before I left because I know what happens when I take photos after the event. My nine year old son ran down the drive and threw my hand fan through the car window onto the seat next to me as I pulled out.

The fan came in handy because with the rush to get out the door, I was sweating by the time I got to the car. I fanned myself furiously most of the way to the tea.

My high school science teacher said the amount of energy you expend fanning yourself cancels out its cooling effects, but the fanning practice helped me with my feelings even if it may not have cooled me down. Mush, you were right about so many things, but maybe you didn’t consider the psychological benefits when you did the math on fanning energy waste.

As I was driving away I realized the one thing I forgot was a hanky, only to find one in the reticule moments later when digging for my lip balm at a red light. Again, thank you, Past Laura.

I wore the new-to-you short gown with my purple gown. I removed the sleeves on the gown to make it into a bodiced petticoat a ways back, but hadn’t yet worn it in its sleeveless form.

I wore my wrap stays because lacing even four rows of eyelets on my short stays felt like too much work. I promised I would someday show you a pic of the wrap stays actually on me, so here’s that:I got to the tea one minute late, which is a record. I wasn’t the last one there. I didn’t have to sit by people who were already friends and content to talk amongst themselves. I did get to sit across from an elderly man who had some views I was compelled to challenge, and that ran down my social battery faster than might have happened otherwise.

As with two lions at the door of an old manor, there was another person at the other end of the table who also preferred to live in another time when people were allowed to be openly racist, so there was a real tennis match for a bit. I think both people realized those of us who called them on their statements weren’t going to let them get away with it. Or maybe they just got tired of us.

…Can we talk about the scones for a minute? When I started going to this tea house with the local JASNA group a few years ago, their gluten-free food was…. bad. It was bad. It was crumbly and dry and an insult to real food.

This year, the scones came hot out of the oven, and they were chewy and good. It’s the thing I miss the most about not eating gluten – chewy cookies, chewy bread, chewy anything. And I love coming back to something – an establishment, an author, you name it – to find they have upped their game.

During our book discussion, a comment was made about people in Jane Austen’s time drinking sea water for their health. I said the Palestinians would have something to say about that, and I got a room full of blank stares. Maybe one person knew what I was talking about.

Israel bombed Gaza’s desalination plants. The solar panels that powered the plants were destroyed. When workers try to fix the plants, they are targeted. This is also true of Gaza’s sewage treatment plants. It’s almost impossible to get anything working again.

Palestinians have been drinking sea water for months because there is nothing else. Nearly all the available water is contaminated. It makes them sick. So while some health trends in Jane Austen’s time have held up (cold sea baths!), this one has not. At all.

According to Leila Sadat, a former special adviser on crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court,”‘You can’t just look strike by strike… [t]hey [the IDF] have hit water pipes, tanks, reservoirs, and infrastructure,’ she said.

I was unable to communicate this to the group because there were no soap boxes in the room, but I can say it now.

So, as I said, the scones were good. The salad was good. There was cold, fresh water (There is fresh water at my house, but it’s almost never cold, because my precious kids don’t refill the water pitcher in the fridge. Minor complaint given my city’s water and sewer systems aren’t mingling like they are in Gaza.)Yesterday I saw a child’s tattered body be pulled out of the rubble by a group of skinny men and teenage boys, calling out to God continuously as they did so. I do mean tattered. The small form tapered off in shreds.

I also saw the head of a little girl. There was no body. Just a head, with a ponytail. Lying on the carpet where they were collecting body parts after a bombardment. I’m crying just writing this.

I wanted to go to the tea. I can’t not live my life. But the juxtaposition felt like sand paper. How could I go to a tea instead of stay home and just squeeze my kids and tell them how much I love them? My kids who have food and are not being buried in their home as they sleep by bombs that say “Made in the USA.”

I hope the images I described create etch marks on your mind and heart. We can’t live normal lives at this time. Perhaps in other times when atrocities were being committed, we might have found out afterward, and then what could we do? But this time it is happening now and we KNOW. I’m choosing to center Gaza, but that is just one of many inflamed parts of the earth right now that are flares of human suffering. It’s preventable. It’s unnecessary.

This isn’t what humans are made for. Maybe we also aren’t made to sit and drink tea in historical dresses. But we definitely weren’t made to commit genocide.