Eighteen

On my way to work Saturday afternoon, my mood high enough, ish. Nothing plaguing me other than some residual work anxiety, not anything out of the realm of manageability, just your typical pre-holiday freak out along with residual panting. Some of the little bits of my ever changing personal life slipping into spots that while not totally comfortable just yet, have been making me feel, which is just about as welcoming as anything I can think of. Least in my current state. I was rolling in my badass ride, (Camry) about forty-five minutes late, (the only thing I love about the closing shift, don’t have to open so I can slither in a bit late) speeding a touch and with my music about five clicks louder than it should have been. 

“There are words that should be whispered gently

That's evidently the way to start

If I tell you what my dreams have been demanding

Let's call a heart a heart

Maybe you would call a true confession

And indiscretion on someone's part

But if I'm to say how madly I adore you

Let's call a heart a heart”

Billie’s voice sticky with pain and saturated with her preferred medication. I heard the smoke bouncing off her vocal cords and flinched with each heroin soaked slur. The tin can sounding recording filling the cavernous emptiness of my car, the pop and scratch of a tiny needle being pulled across vinyl, the faint hiss and soft sputter of a disc spinning, the sadness and begging of a tragically gifted soul. The words surged against me like a giant wave taking me under. I held my breath, heard her, like actually heard her, and pictured what kind of woman I might think I’d have been had I been there, hearing her sing this song for the first time.

Fingers strumming the steering wheel, my own bruised and smoke damaged vocal cords expanding in my throat as I crooned along with the Lady Day. Visions of myself, in the early 40s, one of those women uncomfortable in the days clothes, choosing instead to lounge about my, assuredly messy, and tiny apartment in Harlem, (oh you can bet your ass that would be me) in some sort of silky slip or sturdy bra and oversized panties, garters and a cigarette hanging from my gin soaked lips. Feeling Billie and aching to contribute the way she did. Maybe messy, maybe ornery, maybe sad and longing, but making people tremble and want the way she was making me.  

“When we are in a friendly situation

My conversation may not be smart

But if we've to have a perfect understanding

Let's call a heart a heart”

The song ended and I reached for the car stereo remote. A red light afforded me the time fondle and flip, settle on some mindless and soulless piece of pop music that made me bounce a bit and think just a wee bit less. Light change and I began my travels again. On my way to the start of our store’s 18^th holiday season. Coast, snarl at the jackhole that cut me off, bop to the industrial and somewhat insipid music and that was when I happened to catch a glimpse of a wonderfully familiar sight. A vintage car resting in the driveway of a house I pass twice a day, nearly every day.  Saw big loopy burgundy colored bows, fake green shrubbery, the subtle white lights dangling and while it was daylight and they were not lit I knew, white icicle lights….always. I instinctively reached for the knob on my stereo and turned the volume of whatever asshole bit of senseless music I had thundering, down, rested my foot a bit on the brake pedal, took a second to look and had tears in my eyes when I saw, “18 Years Cancer Free” on a proud and noble banner that stretched across the garage door….of a house that I pass twice a day nearly every day, and have for almost 18 years.

Got home that night, the day a bit slower than I had hoped but still full of new faces, people coming in to rent our new wine storage lockers, seeing Dale’s face beam each and every time we went back to the office and told her, “There is someone here that would like to rent one of your lockers”. Her bit of the business that doesn’t require tasting notes or recommendations. A place for her, beyond gift baskets and accessories, a place that she and her brother worked on to make happen, a place she had to finish on her own. Her beloved brother sadly, and shockingly passing away before he got to see the space, smell the “wood stained” metal, before the first lock was clicked. I couldn’t stop watching her all day. Marking the angle of her gorgeous smile, the height of her eyebrows when her eyes would expand with excitement. I felt her missing him. Felt our store growing and changing because of what they did…

My dance with Billie that morning still on my mind I popped in my earbuds and spun the little turnie thing on my ipod. Shifted from Dave to James Taylor. From Alison Krauss to Amy Winehouse and while I can always find some sort of ease in music it was Billie that was on my mind. I pressed the spinner again, hovered over her name and selected that dope soaked groan and shallow, hard metallic stabs of vintage music to thump around in my noggin while the number 18 swam about in my subconscious.

The Wine Country is now 18, my drive by cancer survivor an 18 year reminder of courage and hope. 18, a number that seems so small when I think of it in terms of age but when a more sane me thinks in chunks of time, well that number is sort of a big one…

I had been 18 all of thirty eight days when I gave birth to my son, two months early and with a mother that dropped me off at the emergency room talking to the nurses but not me. I was seven months pregnant, terrified, not working, not with the man that assisted in my situation and assuming I would have to give my son up for adoption, to save us both. That wee soul and his tiny fingers, three pound body that showed up without heartbeat or breathing, he struggled to be here, fought for air, battled to feed, wiggled closer to the incubator wall whenever I would awkwardly coo at him through the thick plastic. The second those bitty digits bent around mine I knew, he fought for me so I would do the same for him. Forever. From that day at 18 years old until the day they had me plugged up to machines that helped me breathe…

“It doesn’t look good. I hope you make it” the late night call that made me the matriarch of our little family. My sister had been 18 all of nineteen days when an embolism would change her life. Change our lives in ways we weren’t even close to being ready for. She was 18 when she came to live with us and while I would never, in a million years, give us any credit for the woman that she has become, coming here was the start of a journey for her that would lead to her life now. Meeting the man she would fall madly in love with and marry. Her drive and resolve, astounding intellect and compassion to help others that has her now a speech pathologist with a legion of adoring wees that love her. How could they not? She’s amazingly strong, beautiful, funny, and brilliant and has one of those laughs that make the entire world within earshot laugh right along with her. Just being the tiniest fraction of her 18, well as hard as it was on all of us, probably her most of all, I am proud to have shared in it just as she did mine…

“Welp, here are the keys. We are going to head over to the hotel and wash this humid off us” me making light and pretending that the smudges of black eyeliner that had melted into my cracked face were due solely to the humidity there in Louisville. Jeremy was 18 and moving into the dorms, the ones that were a trillion miles away from me. I faked humid face melting but I had been crying for weeks. I was barely formed when this tiny person came into my life, tugged at my heart and boot straps, made me whole enough to be there…saying goodbye to him. We grew up together he and I and standing there, handing over the keys to his 1993 Camry before climbing into the rental car that would take me away from that most crushing spot of land on the planet, the one where I would leave my baby to make his own 18 year old mistakes and triumphs, well it assured me that no matter how old we can still have that 18 year old fear, and optimism. 

“There ain't nothin' I can do or nothin' I can say

That folks don't criticize me but I'm going to do
Just as I want to anyway
And don't care just what people say

If I should take a notion, to jump into the ocean
Ain't nobody's business if I do
If I go to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday
Ain't nobody's business if I do”

Billie still in my ears as I swayed back and forth in my kitchen making dinner. I made my mother’s Thanksgiving dinner that night. The stuffing with way too much butter and plump raisins, the pan I would “over-cook” to perfect crispiness. The super crunchy turkey skin and dried white flesh beneath it. The sweet pickles, black olives, chunky un-whipped mashed potatoes. Found myself adding a little jalapeno cream cheese to those chunky spuds, reduced the gravy rather than adding Wondra flour, had picked out a Vouvray and Bourgogne Rouge to serve with the meal, something that I’d never seen, wine, at the Thanksgiving table until I started at The Wine Country,  and didn’t bother with the tiny rolls that she used to sweep with salted butter and sprinkle with sugar. My mother’s influence there but with all the little bits of, 18, flavoring and seasoning me, my family and our meal just as much as she did. 

Did a tiny bit of internet scanning and found that much like my sister, my son and myself, Billie Holiday started her life, no matter how tragically, when she turned 18 and cut her first album. I sat here this evening listening to garbled and sloppy sounding old recordings from her. Melting under lyrics like, “I’ve got it bad and that aint good” and “Lord above me, make him love me” and laughing as I picked at leftovers and slurped at glass after glass of Vouvray, (the last wine I shared with my mom, it made her toot which always, always made her laugh uncontrollably….which also made her toot)  when I heard a recording of her from 1955 where she grumbled, “They kept telling me I had to sing up tempo. Pop songs. I told him, fuck you, I wanna sing what I wanna sing”….

She sang what she wanted

The store continues to grow

I swallowed spoonful after spoonful of blood and fear

My sister became the wonder that she is

My son had the courage to leave and come back

I’ve gotten to see it all…

I feel 18 again, only better.

In other words, Richard Land, fuck you.
XOXOXOX
Proud Mom

http://www.christianpost.com/news/adoption-the-best-option-109268/

I, I Need To Know

Just a few minutes ago, I passed through my home without one thought of you but somewhere between washing the days grime from my face and passing through the kitchen still lingering with the evening dinner aromas; onions, lemons, seared flesh, my mind flickered, a faint memory, a night of which I have barely spoken…my night with you, the way I had longed for it and the way it went tragically wrong.



I’m not romantic by nature but there is something fascinating about the way these things happen. The way one look, one touch, one unspoken but inferred and saturated line of words can peel off a layer of fear, skin, armor, or how something as harmless as an invitation to dinner can change forever what you thought you would…or would not do. How quickly we can get lost, lose our footing and stumble into something we were in no way ready for…my night with you, that night…I let myself stumble and I spend more time than I care to admit thinking about it.

I have wanted you for as long as I can remember, thought about touching you, having your scent envelop me, have my breath smell of you, feeling your power overtake me and letting myself soften and squish beneath your weight. I had let my mind spin about in wondrous stories about how it may happen, where we would be, who might be with us, when I would know, know the second it was about to happen…when you were ready to surrender, open up and let me take you in.

To harbor such desire for so long, to let your mind play while your body is unable to..only stokes the want, makes the longing more deliciously painful, even thinking of those years before that night, make me wish I could go back there…pay closer attention, know what I wanted more, know what part of you I might linger over the longest. Would I spend my, much ached for seconds hovering over you…taking deep lung filling smells, let your aroma seep deep inside of me, saturate each open bit of me, or would I let my tongue be my memory, let your taste spread all over me and be the one that I would measure all others against? Flashes, fantasies, seconds, minutes, hours…all you, they all belonged to you, to Us and it was all lost, in one night.




Have you ever wanted someone so bad that you quiver at the very thought of it, have a physical reaction to the mere idea of being close enough to smell their hair, taste the salt on their skin, dreamed of that three hour second just before your lips touch? The way your heart pounds and breathing gets more labored and desperate with each tiny inch closer to touching, flicking, biting, shaking and the inevitable prying of the lips. Eyes closed, mouth open, welcoming, wanting and waiting...





Now there has always been all kinds of chatter on the internets about bloggers, wine critics and credibility, and one thing that keeps flashing before my skimming-of-the-chatter-eyes, "the only way to truly judge a wine fairly is to taste it blind” and to that I have to say bullshit, or sort of bullshit. 

To remove the acquisition aspect of some wines is like making love to that person you have been wanting for years... craved, lusted for and spent hours devouring from afar....finally feeling them wet and beneath you or firm and above you, with the lights off. Would it mean as much if you had no idea who it was? It may not change the actual physical sensation but part of the pleasure is in the, having, for some of us anyway. So okay, you just made love to someone, it was nice…maybe not the best you have had, but viola, you turn on the lights and it’s Scarlett Johansson…change anything? Would it have changed anything if the lights were on BEFORE?! Okay, I’m being sexist, for the ladies lets imagine Denzel Washington, The HoseMaster of Wine, Adam Levine, (had to look that up, Sexiest Man Alive? Hesh up)  or George Clooney…although speaking as a hetero female, Scarlett? Dude, so down...she makes my flesh all pink and puckery and junk...

Spent a night years ago picking these wines apart...blind. Sat at a paid for dinner while a bunch of more-money-than-me jackwads pissed and picked apart these sensual, rarely seen this open treats. Me fumbling with my pen and even then wondering why I was there. You procured these wines, invited all of us to taste...

 In the interest of, I don't know what. Honesty? 

Honestly, had I known what I was rolling about in my mouth, I might have taken a fucking second to pay just a bit more attention. 

If I had only known....

Alright By Me

“I don’t need no concert in the city, got a stereo and The Best of Patsy Cline.

Aint got no caviar, no Dom Perignon but as far as I can see I got everything I want.

 I got all I need and it’s alright by me.

I got shoes under my feet and forever in her eyes staring back at me. It’s alright by me”

A simple but soothing voice, warm and soulful spilling into my ears, filling my head and causing me and my stress bearing shoulders to sway. My neck loosening and all the tiny bones that run down my back unclenching as the banjo, fiddle and honey soaked voice coaxed the exhale I’ve been chasing for months from my chest. I felt the arches of my feet raise as my toes did as they want to do. Tugging across the carpet, up, down, back on the heels as my teeth dug deep into the fleshy bit of my bottom lip and my floppy hair spilled across my forehead covering one eye, my head bobbing to the playful, joyful, thankful bit of music that pumped through my entire being. Pulled at my core and made me actually smile…like a real, genuine, sincere smile. That ugly thing has been on hiatus as of late. Sure I can fake it like The Best of Cinemax chicks but to catch myself in an increasingly rare moment of sheer joy? Well I would have been pink-cheeked had I not needed it so fucking badly. 

Wasn’t the music really, although I have found former Hootie and the Blowfish star Darius Rucker’s solo, more country stuff wicked enjoyable, and I do still find him a whole lotta dreamy, it was the simplicity of the words, the story and meaning behind them that had me bent, swerving, feeling the tender and plushy bits of old carpet scraping against my flesh as my feet shuffled beneath my chair. The message, “I don’t need no five star reservations, got spaghetti and a cheap bottle of wine….as far as I can see I got everything I want. I got a roof over my head, the woman I love laying in my bed. It’s alright by me.” Resonating and pinging like one of those silver pinball balls through me, bouncing around and slamming against the bars gaining points and momentum. 

Yup, been sucked into some wretched pre-holiday uckiness that has sunk its teeth into my neck and has drained everything out of me. My laughter. My snarl. My bite. My inquisitive nature. My desire. My indignation. My cravings. My drive. All of it buried under a pile of “How come?” that probably hasn’t any answers. It just is. People come, leave, chose you and chose to leave you. Move on to better themselves, dislike you for no and a hundred reasons, the trying to figure it out and fix it, Your issue not theirs. With the playful pluck of banjo strings and Darius Rucker filling me from the inside out I started thinking about the things that matter. The ones that are “Alright by me”

Kicking my shoes off after a long shift. Alright with me because it feels nearly as good as wet lips along my ribs.

The sting of ice on my teeth when I sip a much needed, icy martini. Alright with me because I fucking earned it.

When the sleep timer on the television in the bedroom kicks off. That metallic pitch right before the whole room goes dark and the silence. Feeling like I can hear the tips of my eyelashes brush against my cheek as I lie in the dark quiet and remember…Alright with me because I need that time to, well remember.  

Seeing my mother’s face, in my face. Alright with me because I’m beginning to look more like her, a legacy I’m proud to have changed a bit and when I see her looking back at me through the mirror in the mornings, I miss her less and hope that if there is a way, she’s proud of me.

Sobbing while watching a sappy chick flick love story. Alright with me because I know how they feel…

The sting of bacon grease when it spatters on my skin. Alright with me because it means I’m cooking and creating nourishment that will likely, hopefully, bring some people I love joy…worth it.

Detecting a corked wine. Alright with me because I am still the #1 corked wine sniffer outter at The Wine Country. Got a little skill there me…

Crying because I failed. Alright by me because it means I tried.

The way I rant, stomp about and create little flaming disasters. Alright by me because as much heartbreak as I’ve swallowed and given, these veins of mine are still vibrant and pumping. 

The way I can sometimes smell the night before leaking out of me. Alright by me because I am fine with being less than fucking perfect.

That I am often pinned against a wall with someone “misunderstanding” me. Alright with me because if I’m throwing that off, well I can’t be mad, I feel sort of girlishly pleased. But um, back the fuck up.

That the last vintage of Pierre Guillemot Savigny Aux Serpentieres filled my mouth a little more than this one. Alright by me because it means I’ve had several vintages of that glorious wine spill across my palate leaving a stain that I can’t forget. 

“I didn’t think that wine was drinking. I think I want more fruit or more aged Burgundy than what you have here” sort of Alright by me because it makes me strive harder, work harder, look deeper.

The rash I have gotten from wearing sweats that are too big while I am working out. Alright by me because those irritated little bits of skin remind me that I am making myself uncomfortable in an effort to make myself more comfortable.

Being told that I am closed minded because I don’t tout or promote certain wines. Alright by me because I am now looking for the best prices on airfare to France in April because I have been asked to attend the Les Artisans du Champagne at Les Crayeres as well as having the importer invite me to stay on through Burgundy and the Loire. Big, (as in fat) fish in a smallish pond, never in a million years would have thought…

I get annoyed with my staff at times. Alright by me because it means that I expect more, because I know they have it in them, and we wear the badge of being…better.

I’m like a savant when I make love. I spend hours letting my fingers trace and file away each and every inch of the very few men I have ever succumb to in that way. Alright by me because it means I was in love enough to spend hours, days if you would have let me, with my fingers, nose, eyes and mouth gathering and categorizing your each millimeter. Loving like that is alright by me…

I don’t particularly like Cabernet Sauvignon. Alright by me as there are so many other varieties that need me, my nose, my lips and my particular brand of RAWR more.

I was once married under the moon to a man that spent years trying to run away from me. Alright by me because I still love him and all I need to do to visit with him is slip outside. The trickle of water over stones, the in and out of my own breath, the big swollen moon hanging above the both of us, the “My Love, I miss you so” always just there beneath the moon and waiting…just as I will forever be 

I like to fancy myself some sort of a writer and at times, I am terrified to speak. Alright by me as it assures me that I am still as humble and befuddled as ever. I still giggle when I hear someone call me a specialist and seeing the names of the people I do in my email box….even now, takes my breath away….

At the end of the day, no matter how long and full of bullshit…I have this one voice, these wide open eyes, a heart that while bruised is still vulnerable to true love. A palate that is respected and encouraged, willing and wanting to learn more. I wear an older lady’s face while still having a young woman’s laugh. I protect those I love more than I would ever myself. I am sad but full of hope. I don’t want to talk but I want you to hear and feel me. I’m forever afraid and waiting for the other shoe but….I got this stereo and The Best of Patsy Cline. Spaghetti and a cheap bottle of wine…

Alright by me.

Growing Fonder

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” this little phrase has always led me to mutter another, “Utter bullshit”. Not only have I never understood the phrase I have, on several occasions, seen it proven absolutely false. Absence, in the arena of passionate love, and strictly in my personal experience, has proven to live up to its name, leave an empty seat. The missing and lack of physical touch, exchanging of glances, being able to brush your lovers arm as you walk past, leading over time to anger, resentment, insecurities, blame, loneliness…lots and lots of tears. The once powerful and strong beating hearts reduced to swollen and glistening blobs, sore to the touch. Yeah, love affairs and long distances, for like extended amounts of time, those don’t work for me and my particular brand of crazy chick. I need the touching, the kissing, the laughing and the late nights with my face nuzzled into the flesh I crave. Just a thing, but a couple visits over the past couple months flipped that little, ‘Ahhh I think I might sort of get it now” switch and while I might still question that whole “Grow fonder” nonsense, I have to say being face to face with a great love after not seeing them for a too long a time…I can see some fondness there.

Last month I was able to spend a few hours with a couple folks I hadn’t seen in years, hadn’t made enough effort to reach out to and whose thrilled to see me faces filled a couple deflated places in this swollen blob of a heart of mine in the most delightful and needed way. One sweet loving friend launching into ball breaking jokes within five minutes of our hugging out the missing and the other stepping out from behind a very private and protective veneer to express a comfort in my friendship, in words so sweetly saturated with affection, and an openness so out of character that it took every bit of badass I had to not start blubbering on the spot. Being made to feel truly loved and appreciated, even when you have been, shamefully less than present, well yeah, who couldn’t see the fondness in that?

This past Saturday, while fielding “Not sure we can be friends anymore” emails and snarling comments on my last post, as well as a zillion Facebook messages from others about the whole thing I got to step away from my laptop and the ire of others and fondly melt into the arms of a far too often neglected Great Love of mine, the wines of Alsace. Standing there in the tasting room, lips tugging at racy Rieslings, luscious Pinot Blancs and wildly spiced Gewurztraminers, letting the friendly familiarity and reminder of great love spill across my palate, slip beneath my skin an wash away any little bit of yuck that had been plaguing me and making my jaw too tight….the fondness for those wines pumping a little beat back into my tough old heart. Got home that evening, feet sore and back a wee bit stiff from pouring for the sixty plus people that turned out, in awe of the fact that we could draw that kind of crowd, not just for white wine but for Alsatian white wines when we pulled in a whopping fifteen for Zinfandel, knowing that part of the reason for that was my years of cooing and nuzzling, sharing my heart and openly talking about the great love, the fondness I have for the astoundingly versatile wines from that little corner of France. My heart pretty fond of that feeling, no matter how long it takes to get there.