"No meal is complete without a cup of tea."
My father said that so often I stopped hearing it — the way you stop hearing a clock tick when it's always been there. It wasn't until I lost him, in early June of 2006, that those words came rushing back to me with the full weight of everything they carried.
He was gone just a week or two before Father's Day that year. I had already bought his card. I had already chosen his gift. I never got to give them to him.
I still have the card.
Inside was a verse that I've returned to more times than I can count — because even now, it says exactly what I would have said:
"…One certain man, one caring man, gave me the best he had — a legacy of lasting love. The gift of one great Dad!"
That card sits with me quietly every June. Not as a reminder of what I lost, but as a reflection of what I was given. A legacy of love doesn't disappear when someone does. It lives in the things they taught you. The values they passed on. The rituals they made sacred.
What I got was something I didn't expect: the realization that he had already given me everything. His words. His rituals. His belief that the simplest moments — a meal, a cup of tea, a table shared with people you love — are the ones that matter most.
That is the legacy I carry. And it is the one I pour into every cup.
A Legacy Steeped in Love
Father's Day is a holiday that invites us to pause — to look back at the hands that shaped us, the voices that guided us, and the quiet moments we may have taken for granted. The stores fill up every June with the usual suspects — sports gear, ties, grilling accessories, gadgets, tools. And while there's nothing wrong with any of those, the most meaningful gifts aren't always the ones you can wrap.
Sometimes, the most lasting gift is a lesson. A ritual. A simple saying passed down over a lifetime.
The Tea Is His
When I opened Lola's Tea House in 2007, and when I later evolved that dream into The Tea Experience, I was not just starting a business. I was honoring a man. I was carrying forward his belief that tea is not a beverage — it is a moment of care.
Every cup of organic loose-leaf tea I share with a customer, every tea party I design with intention, every SimpliciTEA box I curate — all of it traces back to a dad who believed that no meal, no moment, no day was truly complete without a cup of tea.
That is his gift, still being given.
For Those Who Still Have Their Person
If your father is still here — call him. Sit with him. Make a pot of tea together if you can.
Not because it's Father's Day. But because those ordinary moments become the extraordinary memories. The ones you'll reach for later, when the house gets quieter than you expected.
And if he's no longer here — I see you. Grief and gratitude can live in the same breath, especially in June. You are not alone in that.
Sip With Intention This Father's Day
However you're spending this Father's Day — celebrating, remembering, or simply sitting quietly with what the day brings — we hope there's a cup of tea in it.
Tea has always been our way of slowing down, of holding space for the people and moments that matter. This Father's Day, we invite you to make that ritual your own.
Our curated organic loose-leaf teas are blended for exactly these kinds of moments — the ones worth savoring, the ones you'll want to return to.
Happy Father's Day Dad :-)
Love, Leslie