"Last Meal"

My daughter and I have successfully cohabitated for the past two plus years.  And we've successfully worked together.  I know - truly a different relationship we share.  At the very least, certainly not traditional mother-daughter.  But then, when is anything in my life 'traditional'?

Now, though, two years out of Berkeley, she's reaching for the CITY.  And not just any city - oh, no.  She's going for La-La Land.  She leaves in May ... 

Changes, and their ripple effects, fascinate me.  Part of her leaving reminds me so of myself, when I was leaving home at the age of 21, to travel across the country.  I wanted to wring every last ounce of those last few weeks, asking for favorite meals, going to my favorite park, spending a lot of time with my girlfriend Lynn - who, I'm happy to report, remains my friend still.  As if I could soak up a lifetime of memories to sustain me after I was gone.

Jordan is doing the same thing.  'Mom, aren't you coming walking with me?  I'm leaving in two weeks, you know.'  'Mom, will you make chicken and dumplings for me?  I'm leaving in a week, you know.'  It's heart warming, and heart wrenching, in equal measure.  Heart warming, to know that she will carry these pieces with her wherever she goes, that our time as adult family will always be part of who she is as she goes forward.  Heart wrenching, because 'I'm leaving in a week, you know.'

So this morning, I prepared her request meal - chicken and dumplings.  Hungarian style, only with a twist for the grown-up taste buds of my daughter.  I used a LOT more hot paprika than I did sweet.  So much more that my first taste of the gravy damn near seared my throat closed!  But she'll like it.  Funny thing about the connectivity, from generation to generation, and the things that can trigger such connectivity.  For Jordan, I've connected her to my grandmother, to my mother, through certain foods.  Hungarian chicken and dumplings; Hungarian sauerkraut and spareribs; Grandma's Christmas cookies.  These meals are tradition where I come from, and they are now tradition wherever Jordan will go.  And, yes, as I cooked, I mourned.  It was a healthy mourning - a poem came from it, and I've not written a poem in a dearth of Sundays (what is a dearth, anyway?).  The poem is as follows:

     (untitled)

buffeted about, creaking

      swaying - groaning

           in consternation

pieces fly past my window

      cracks and bangs

           resonate

as my oak does what

       I cannot -

           weeps.

                                N.

As these last few weeks rush by, screaming in their eagerness to always move, move, move, I will do my best to simply enjoy.  And save my mourning time for when I am alone.  I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time alone for a bit.

 

Insomnia ...

It's amazing to me that, what we celebrated as kids, we bemoan as adults.  As a child - think teens into early twenties - I could stay up forever.  Not days without end, of course, but two, maybe three hours' sleep, and I was golden the next day.  Now, when sleeplessness hits me - as it seems to have a wont to do when stress rears its ever so familiar head - I am a walking zombie.

I've tried sleep aids, p.m. pain relievers, herbal teas.  And, while each of them have their merit, the body soon becomes immune to their subtle tricks, and reverts to its old habits.

That of not sleeping.

Or rather, that of sleeping for about two hours, and declaring it ENOUGH!  Would that it were ...

So tonight, as the day washes through my mind and I reflect on what I accomplished (creative writing on demand blog of Alec & Isobele continued, check; walk taken with daughter and dogs, check; kitchen cleaned, check; all work completed, check), I'm feeling it's a rather good day.  In fact, it's about spot on perfect for what I had stated I wanted to accomplish.

See, Jordan, my roommate of the past two years, who just happens to be my much-beloved daughter, is moving out.  She's spreading her wings, as any eaglet should, and is going to fly away to her own tree.  A tree we fondly call La-La Land, aka Los Angeles.  Only a few hours down the freeway, and a few light years removed from where I live now.

And each time I try and focus on 'what next' for my life, I get caught back up in the fact that Jordan is moving.  So, as sleep approaches, I can almost hear the gerbils talking to one another, rather like Calvin's alter-egos speak as he sleeps, planning out his dreams.  Only my gerbils don't want me to dream, oh, no.  They want to give me these thoughts, worries, angst-ridden moments, while on the cusp of sleep, so that even as my body begs for rest, my mind whirls like the Tasmania Devil himself.  The Bugs Bunny Taz, of course.

Rather than try an old sleep aid whose effectiveness has worn off, I'm trying something new.  A quick blog, with my Scottish music by Steve McDonald, playing softly, only candlelight in the bedroom, the windows open for the breeze and the one-note (according to my very musically inclined daughter) wind chime which hangs from the oak singing softly in the breeze; a quick interlude for a warm, steamy shower to relax the body even further, and then back into the sheets, where I will play a few mind-numbing games of Solitaire (don't even MENTION Angry Birds to me...), and at last turn off my music and, gods be willing and pillows be soft, I will sleep.


That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  Good night, y'all.

Festival ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Vintner's Fest.  2012.

Saturday morning, I woke up with a headache at 4:30; drank some water, took some Advil (God's finest gift, in my opinion), and went back to sleep.

8:30, when I climbed from bed, I wondered what had happened to my usual joy.  When I wake up, regardless of the time of day or night, I wake up happy.  Unless it's a nap; then I wake up surly, disoriented, and not very pleasant to be around.  But this was waking up for the day ... and I felt as if I'd just crawled into bed.  My spirits were down, my body was dragging, my mind was slow.  What the heck???

And then it hit me - Festival.  I'm going to set the scene for you, as seen by those of us working the industry:  imagine the old horror movies, and the voice of the man portraying the dark, evil, monster wrapped in a human body.  The music that would wrap around the dark voice, and suddenly your body is thrumming with dread as you watch these movies - yet, the dread is not understood.  There's the threat of ... and the music and the voice say the 'threat of....' is going to be nastier than you could ever imagine.  So, with that voice in your head, the music as its back-beat, I want you to read again...Festival.

Bamp-bamp-bum!!!!!

I was expecting - anticipating - eagerly ready for - Festival.  In all of its dark undertones.

Ever notice that, when you least expect it, life throws you a curve ball, and you forget to swing?  And suddenly the opposing team is winning because you don't know how to swing at anything other than a fast ball, so you duck, and you, and the team, are screwed.  Well, sometimes, those curve balls are great, wide, wonderful things.  They take the moment at hand, twist it just a little bit, and give you something wonderful.  Apple trees, rainbows, and cellar doors.

And that's what happened to me this Festival.

I left the house with errands ... three of them, to be exact.  Refill my daily hormone replacement drug, buy vacuum cleaner bags, and drop off my comforter at the cleaners.  Two out of three were strike outs; not a good start for what I anticipated to be a very challenging day.

I arrived at the winery at 10:30, was given my favorite station, out on the patio, and was given a newbie to train - Kelly.  All of 24 years old, blond and beautiful, I felt old and fat beside her.  My problem, certainly not hers ... oh, but it troubled me.  Strike three - batter out.

It didn't make me feel any better to learn that she's educated, career driven, and an absolute sweetheart of a young girl.  Her mother used to work at Sanford, before Richard split from his partners and opened Alma Rosa.  It's a family affair....and I felt even worse for my negative thoughts - more about me, than her, but since she was the catalyst for the moment ... well, you know how that goes.

And then the customers began to arrive.  From the very first interaction, I had fun.  Every person I talked with had a story - we had club members, favorite wine tour drivers (who happened to have his phone with a few videos of his baby and wife that he shared with me and it was a really fabulous interlude in a grand day), bachelorette parties (Sylvia was unveiled, and my comment was, 'so you met him last week in Vegas, your mother approved, and you decided to go for it'; the whole group got a laugh, and she told me before they left my station that she was going to make up a new story for every stop that Brian was taking them to ... getting into the spirit of the day and having even more fun with it), club members (one who makes his own mead and is going to Boston on a 'mead tasting tour' with people from all over New England - too cool!), we hosted vertical tastings with two separate Pinot Noirs, taught people about the Riedel glass and why one should NEVER rinse the Riedel glass with water during a tasting, and just - well - played.

Richard and Thekla Sanford were there all day; watching them talk with the customers was so awesome.  Both Richard and Thekla are unassuming people - yet they were the first people to plant the revered Pinot Noir in the Santa Rita Hills - now world-renowned.  They were the first to go wholly organic - before organic was cool.  Richard even grows his grape in the old style - as it wishes, called a California Sprawl, as opposed to the straight-up, straight-over, most vineyards prefer. 

I even got a new story from Richard, that he shared with a club member and his brother (the mead guy, whose brother lives in Boston - hence the mead tour).  We (the club member, his brother, Kelly, and me) were talking about spiders, and Richard walked around the bar, asking if Jonah (mead maker) was a spider lover.  He said he was only afraid of the brown recluse, and then Richard told the story.

Y'all know me; I'm all about The Story.  Richard has ten million of them ... this one came out because of a club member.  Richard had been bitten by a brown recluse; he was here, on the ranch, got bit, couldn't find the damn spider, and watched in awe as his leg swelled up.  It went from bad to worse; he finally found an Epi-pen to stop the symptoms, but it didn’t' stop what was happening to his leg.  His skin began to rot - literally.  The bite from the brown recluse kills the flesh around it.  Nowadays, according to Jonah, doctors put maggots in the wound and bandage it.  Because the maggots eat the dead flesh.

Obviously Richard recovered ... even though it took months. 

I'm wondering now, as darkness has fallen and sleep is fast approaching, if this is one story I could have done without....fear of spiders, disgust of maggots, smell of dead flesh ... well, you get where this is going....

At the end of the day, my hormone replacement had been called in to my pharmacy, Kelly had proven she was going to be excellent, I'd gotten to watch both Richard and Thekla in action, told stories, learned stories, shared stories ... the funk I woke up with was long gone.

To make my day beyond perfect, an employee from my D-C Wine days had reached out to me saying, "I'm in town for Festival; let's hook up."  He and his gal came to my house, where we started with Alma Rosa 2009 Mt. Eden Pinot Noir, El Jabali Vineyard, and morphed into D'Bruno 2006 Merlot, Grassini Vineyard, with sautéed peppers, fried bread, three cheeses, a loaf of sourdough, salami, and some gorgeous Late Harvest Riesling  from Santa Barbara Winery.  I've not seen Matt and Jamie for nigh on a year - the short time together, with Jordan added into the mix, was sweet, poignant, funny, and perfect.

When they left, and the kitchen was finally cleaned, I remembered why I loved the wine industry.

It's about the people - both in, and out, of the industry.  It's about the stories, the sharing of the stories, the power of the stories.  It's about remembering that we all have our own unique story.

And it's remembering to get out there and share that story.

Tomorrow, I do it all again.  And I can't wait!

A Capital Time...

At the age of 52, I've just had my first trip to the nation's capital.  Wow; what an incredible experience.  

Monument from Willard Hotel

I thought I had a pretty good handle on what Washington, D.C. looked like.  I mean, come on, all the spy movies and thrillers, even spoofs on the President; we've all seen films where D.C. was the main feature.  How much of a surprise could it be, really?  Oh, fool, me!  The scope of the city is impossible to view on film.  No matter the size of the screen; my brain simply couldn't wrap around the sheer size of that town.  The first thing that struck me was that, no matter where you looked, the Monument could be seen.  From every direction in the city, from high above the ground, from across the Potomac, there was the Monument.  More often than not, as my eye would be caught yet again by that imposing edifice, tears would come to my eyes.  Not at the magnitude of the Monument, but at what it represents - the City over which it stands guard, and the people who claim that city as their own - Americans.  

The memorials and monuments all stand tribute to one thing, and one thing only.  The fallen hero - whether that hero be a statesman, a serviceman, or an unknown citizen, they gave everything they had to the protection of this grand nation. 

Changing of the Guard

I didn't make it into any of the museums, nor into the National Archives, nor into any of the buildings that house our unique government.  There was simply too much to absorb by staying outside.  I spent a day at Arlington Cemetery; truly, it could have been a week. There's a bit of a side note here; I've always loved old cemeteries, reading headstones, learning of the people of a different time in what they leave behind.  But this cemetery isn't about that; this cemetery is about those who gave the very last measure for what they believed in - us.  A nation of pieces and parts, come together by want or force, from all over the globe.  Made better, stronger, for the coming together, bonded by the blood spilled on our behalf, perfect strangers dying to keep us safe.  Nowhere else in our Nation is that exemplified better than at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Sliding down Lincoln's Memorial

Yet, in the midst of such somber moments, such intense emotion, there was a spirit of play.  Children will always be children, no matter the surroundings.  It was at Lincoln's Memorial that I saw this spirit in its total abandonment to joy.  There, amidst the marble splendor that houses one of the Nation's most celebrated Presidents, children were using the sides of the Memorial as a slide.  And I stood watching, thinking, of all the Presidents to choose from, surely his Memorial was the correct choice - after all, Lincoln was a man of the people, first and foremost.  Inside the Memorial, the atmosphere was hushed, reverent.  Yet out in the sunshine, it was simply one more moment of joy.


Watching that, the unbridled joy, reminded me again of why we struggle so hard to defend our truths, why we have decreed to take our Freedom to the world.  It is so that unbridled joy might always hold sway over all.

I leave you with this - the symbol of our nation, with the symbol of our missing immediately below it.  All over the City, our nation's flag flies.  Fifty flags surround the Monument; they hang down, stars toward the ground, at the Tomb.  They fly at half-mast at Arlington.  They fly over the tent city in the plaza by the Willard Hotel, being used by those who protest our government and the current politics.  The symbol remains the same, a constant - and is recognizable across the globe.  The United States of America.


What was YOUR first impression of the Capital?  Do you believe that freedom comes with a price?  What price would you be willing to pay?