“It’s just nice to be home again. Feels so good I
think we should do it every year” up late the other night watching some lame
chick movie. One of those deals that crosses from the current to back in time
as we watch how our young pod of best girlfriends spend a coming of age summer,
one that would showcase their differences, the differences that would send them
spiraling apart, you know, until this coming home visit where all is righted
once again. Harmless enough and just the kind of mindless junk I have the intellectual
fortitude for at 3:00 AM. The cast worthy of watching and the throwback music
nostalgic, and the only real thing I related to in the film.
When the credits began to roll over the picture of
friendship and coming home again, I grabbed the remote, tossed back the puddle
of whatever wine was in my glass down my gullet and shuffled off to the
bedroom. Teeth brushed, fan whispering the promise of some sort of relief, I
gently tugged at the sheet and folded into bed. The night, or morning rather,
everything my soggy mind was not….still. I lay there my head flipping back and
forth from the silly film to the screaming silence of a missing voice in my
life, the clashing of both causing me to sit up in bed, expel the beaten-down
groan of surrender and slip out of bed once again.
I walked past the empty room where my son once
lived, even more empty in some weird way now that he’s back. His posters gone,
his bed and dressers moved into his new home here, the hope of walking past and
seeing my tiny little man in deep snooze gone and causing me a mildly stinging flicker
of pride, and sadness. My bare feet finding comfort in the soft carpet as I
kept moving down the hall, past the poster from the event I attended in
Champagne this year, past the print we picked up at a museum on one of our
vacations and the framed maps of Burgundian vineyards that hang helpful and
colorful behind my couch. No television this time, I just let the quiet bounce
off the noise in my head, the words “It’s just so nice to be home again” in the
context with which it was intended so foreign to me and just another reminder
that most of the time….I kinda don’t fit.
I let the word “Home” flicker over me in the
darkness of my unmoving living room. I felt home where I was. The pictures of
the places I’ve visited, the increasingly wheezy couch, the kitchen just over
there, a place of pride and elation for me when I’m feeding the people that I
love, the ones that love me back. This is indeed my home and really, the only
one I’ve ever known. Going home again would mean walking right back through
that horribly ugly colored green door with the number 408 affixed to it.
That other kind of home is a feeling that I can’t
quite wrap my head or heart around. I lived another place, a couple of them
actually but the last of “that” feeling, if there ever was one, was taken to
the trash heap along with the dresser drawers that were falling apart from years
of roach and termite infestation, the swollen plastic bags bursting with unpaid
bills, the broken and stained couch that smelled of the brother that was slowly
trying to kill himself on it…like stolen Scotch, cigarettes, unwashed flesh, failed
potential and self-righteousness…the call, that call that took away that bitty
shred of just in case, the call the made me a matriarch at 29 years old.
Home as a feeling or source of soothing is something
I’ve never quite got and has once again shone a light upon one of those areas
of me that I try and pull the material over, try and hide. One of those things
that I’d rather listen to you share with me and make me understand because the
twisting in my tummy assures me that not only do I not have anything to truly share,
I envy even the tiniest bit of comprehension of. I have a family but for the
most part we don’t quite fit into the pre formed roles, shapes and ideals. I
have a black son and while I can smile as people of all races feel comforted
enough to ask him, “Can I touch it?” with regards to his massive and puffy
afro, I can’t not feel Ferguson. An anecdote or annoying bit of civil discourse
to some, paralyzing fear to the mother of a sweet, puffy afro wearing, dark
skinned son that bows to let 90 year olds of all races and colors touch his pillow
of sweet smelling hair, runs across the shop or courtyard to help anyone that
needs his girth and strength, melts when a wee blonde 3 year old calls him his “best
friend”. Kinda wish my mother were here now, curious where her history and
reality of right now would stand on this one. No going home again….hurts. I can
squish and shove my bits this way and that but still, I don’t fit.
“Who the hell are you going to sell these to?!” the warped
face of a coworker as he ran through a few wines, well not wines but Vermouths
that flipped on all my switches and set my motor a running. “There are some, a
few of us that relish in the different goddamn it” I barked back as I let the
last bits of butternut squash vermouth trickle down my throat. Big notebook
slammed shut and nibble of “how could you?” at my spine. “They don’t fit but…I
want them” my argument as I stole, flat-out stole funds from Jeremy (um, that
would be my son) and ordered him slightly impossible, and expensive vermouths
to put on his shelves.
Been
a couple of days since I got these wild things in but….they make sense to me.
They make sense to those of us that aren’t confined to the tiny pieces of
puzzles that can’t be figured out by what we think we know or get. These are
vermouths built by someone I’m guessing is just as displaced by ideals and
looking to create a narrative full of questions….a discussion that includes a
normal that might make us think a bit more. Drinking these, this feels like a
homecoming, and that sexy as fuck bent finger tucked beneath my chin that not
only keeps my head up but encourages me to keep looking forward.
So
nice to be coming home again….
Uncouth
Vermouth Apple Mint $39.99
The
one I didn’t try before ordering and while I wish I had I get where this elixir
places. Bright, easy, clean, full of minty notes that live forever on the
palate long after the vermouth is gone. I thought of ceviche the second I
smelled this, hasn’t gone away.
Uncouth
Vermouth Beet & Eucalyptus $39.99
Can’t
stop smelling this stuff. I’ve been given to sneaking off to the kitchen where
I’ve hidden a bottle, just to burry my nose in the glass and feel my knees give
as the earthy, gamey and slutty aromatics pry me open and fill me up. The nose
is full of spicy minty or eucalyptus up front it is the beguiling beet
earthiness that pulls the shoulder forward and wraps its life and differentness
around you. This is begging for a plate of cured meat, stone ground mustard,
pickles and a glass full of ice with a kiss if gin in it. Wild but in that way
that makes you ache for just a little more investigation.
Uncouth
Vermouth Butternut Squash $39.99
Fresh,
vibrant, raw, spread wide open and unwashed. The kind of beverage that defies
the column A or B…it’s way more complex and twisting than that. That face
across the room that looks familiar but has teeth sunk deeply in its lip and
eyebrow raised….it has been waiting for you, what are you waiting for?
I don’t fit.
They don’t fit
There is a home for all of us
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