The Tea Set

In every family there are people we grow close to and people we never quite reach. In my own family, I have experienced both.

My grandmother on my father’s side is one of the people I never truly got to know. She owned an antique shop and, from what I was told, she worked very hard. I often imagine what those years must have been like for her. I would have loved to hear her stories—what pieces she loved most, how she chose the antiques she placed in her shop, what caught her eye, what history each object carried. But those conversations never happened.

She never really took the time to know me.

I have been blind since birth. When I was a baby, my parents would sometimes ask her if she could babysit. Her response was often, “I don’t know how to deal with her.” That may have been an honest statement for her. Many people feel uncertain when they encounter blindness for the first time.

But when the child is in your own family, wouldn’t you want to learn?

There were a few occasions when she did spend time with me. Each year she attended a Christmas party with her retired friends. Sometimes she invited me to come along, and she would also invite my cousin. She never invited just me.

When our family gathered at her house for Christmas, I often sat quietly. No one really spoke to me. The only people who did were my parents. Eventually, we stopped going for that reason.

One day my grandmother told me about a tradition in the family. Every girl who turned ten years old received a special gift—a tea set. She told me that when I turned ten, I would receive one too.

I remember feeling so excited. For the first time, I felt like I would be included in something that belonged to the girls in our family. A tradition. A connection. A way of saying, You belong here.

When my tenth birthday arrived, I did receive a tea set.

But it wasn’t really a set.

It was a collection of mismatched pieces—cups from one set, saucers from another, different colors, different patterns. It looked less like a tradition and more like a handful of leftovers gathered together.

I never spoke to her about it, but I have often wondered what she was thinking. Perhaps she believed that because I was blind, I wouldn’t know the difference.

And in a purely visual sense, she was right.

I could not see the patterns or the colors. I could not see whether the pieces matched. But meaning is not always found in what something looks like.

My mother was deeply upset when she saw it. She went out and bought me a proper tea set.

We live in a world that depends heavily on sight—so heavily that people often assume that if we cannot see something, we cannot know it.

Rather than focusing on the family tradition itself, my grandmother seemed to focus on my blindness. Perhaps, to her, the gift was simply an obligation fulfilled. After all, if I could not see the difference between a complete set and a mismatched one, why would it matter?

But it did matter.

The tea set was supposed to symbolize belonging. Instead, it reminded me that I was being treated differently.

Blind people are far more aware than the world often realizes. We do not need sight to understand how we are included—or excluded. My blindness is real, but it never had to stand in the way of connection.

When I was ten years old, it broke my heart to feel like I could not truly be part of that family tradition.

My grandmother has since passed away. My only hope now is that wherever she is, she understands something she may not have known then:

My blindness didn’t have to get in the way.

It never had to be a hindrance.

And it is my hope that the world will come to understand this as well—that blindness does not have to stand between people. It does not have to be a barrier to belonging, to connection, or to love.