The pot on the stove

They make it themselves. They always have. Their mother made it in a pot big enough to bathe a child, and poured it into old water bottles that lined the fridge door for weeks.

Take that answer at face value and the bottle never gets made. But the answer is about the bottle, and the bottle is the least interesting part of the question.

Nobody can judge a thing they have never held. Asked to picture it, people reach for what they already do and defend it, a little proudly, because what they already do is part of who they are. A question about the future gets an answer about the past.

The past is still useful, read the other way. Look at the pot. Someone is giving up an afternoon to it. She is boiling, straining, sweetening to a taste her family recognises, and filling bottles so that a cold red glass is ready for whoever comes in from the heat. The itch was never hibiscus. It is being the house where there is always something to offer.

That is what a maker can work with. Not a preference about packaging, but a feeling people have been chasing with their own hands for years.

The seller who starts there will not get permission first. Nobody grants it for something they cannot yet see. She has to bottle it, set it on a shelf, and find out whether it lets someone keep that promise to her guests without losing the afternoon.

Every habit people now defend began as something nobody asked for.