Wednesday, February 26, 2014

There But For The Grace....






“Oh man, where's the person that should be attached to that cart?” my somewhat heart-sunk voice echoing through the warm cavity of my newish model Toyota Camry. I was on my way home from a long work day full of tasting wines, both good and bad, as well as helping all the customers that come in looking for our suggestions for this or that. I had turned on the street I always do, a long slightly industrial road that chugs along with commuter traffic but come around 8:00 PM, pretty vacant and quiet. I flicked my turn signal and directed my car into the right hand lane, as mindless an activity as I do all day and that was when I saw it.



A banged up silver shopping cart loaded with tied off Target bags, stuffed with what was left of someone’s life. The ticking of the blinker in the car urging that I turn, turn right and head home, the dingy plastic bags, double tied plastic handles, a crusty golden blanket that was exactly like the one I had on my bed when I was little, the plushy kind with the satin across the top. The one I would snuggle under when mom was too angry or lost to want me in her room. The one that felt achingly soft against my young skin, the satin bit placed between my pointer and middle fingers, and irresistible sensation I wouldn’t be able to replicate until I was old enough to truly understand sensuality. 

 



Living in urban cities my whole life seeing a cart like that is far from rare. Hell I see them a couple of times a day some days but, to see them unattended, without a disheveled human of varying color and gender attached to it, holding on to what is left of their life, for dear life, well that is truly rare and seeing it there on my drive home…heart breaking. I made my turn, my tummy sinking as I craned my neck to take one more look back, hoping to see someone appear out of seemingly nowhere, wrap their tragically grimy fingers around the front of their home and continue on…didn’t happen. The image of the left behind cart stayed with me for the rest of the night. I wondered what could have happened to the poor soul that tied off all those bags, collected all those scraps of wood, slept beneath that golden blanket. Several scenarios ran through my head, none of them pleasant which bugged me at first but, well none of it is terribly nice to think about, even if there had been a sad soul moving that loaded cart along. That kind of loneliness and helplessness always makes me sigh, like those bone rattling deep ones, and think, “There but the grace of….”





“So, what should I do for my 25th birthday this year?” a coworker asking me a question. Not all that shocking and I was honored to be included in the idea crunching conversation. Even took me a few seconds to realize the face that was forming those words and asking, a coworker but also my son. My Jeremy. 25?! Holy shit.



“Mom. Mom, can you wake up? I have to talk to you.” My voice young, shaking, raspy from crying in the bathroom for an hour before I had the nerve, or the surrender is more like it, to come and face my fiddler. My mother shifted from her spot on the couch, her broad arms bare and long nightdress twisted between her thick folds and gamey with her scent. She looked slightly afraid when she saw my face; stained and terrified, green eyes nearly closed from the puffy. “What is it Sam?” this time her voice shaking a little but hers still affirming her position and letting me know that she was a tad irked that I woke her. She had no idea. 





I broke into hysterical sobbing, begging and trying like hell to make some sort of case for myself. I shoved a packet of adoption papers in her lap, the wide bands of cheap carpet digging into my bare knees as I grabbed her hands and tried to make her forgive me. I was pregnant. Seven months pregnant, long ago departed from the boy that helped me get that way, shaking like I was icing over, as alone as I had ever been in the world. I had kept it a secret this long but was forced into telling her that night when I lost control of my bladder. I didn’t know what was happening to me and was all too aware of the fate I had been promised for as long as I could remember, “If you ever get fucking pregnant I will throw you out. Period.” I told her that I had found a family that wanted to take the baby, that it would be no burden to her and, “We can, please Mom, please, go back to the way things were?” she got up from the couch, didn’t say a word, tossed the papers on the coffee table, went to her room and closed the door. Not one word. My heart split wide open, fear making me consider for one second folding myself over the railing of our balcony…just to make the screaming in my head, the banging from the inside out, stop long enough for me to take a deep breath, feel it hum and fucking hear it leave the pit that was my despair. I heard the screaming that night even louder than I had for the months before, this time it was my own mouth curled and the rawest form of fear I’ve ever  known exploding from within. My voice anguished and every bit of hope I had escaping on a wave of deserted and terrified yelps. 





One week later I would be rushed to the ER, after my mother finished her dinner of course, bent over in a kind of pain I was sure was a punishment of godly proportions. “There’s no amniotic fluid and the umbilical sack has closed in on the baby, he is in severe distress, his heart has stopped beating” a young beautiful face with eyes so warm and comforting I wanted nothing more than to fall into them…have her take me home. My body was in so much pain, I was vomiting and crying, everything was falling apart around me and here were these warm brown eyes, talking to me. Telling me what was going to happen and what I needed to do. The night I lost control of my bladder, that was the night my water broke, the night Jeremy announced himself to my family and the night he began fighting to save, well to save both our lives. It would take him a month to grow strong enough to be released from the hospital, took less than two visits for him to work his sweet magic on the hard hearted lady that was as confused and afraid as her pregnant teenage daughter. Jeremy slipped into the pieces of the heart I had broken. He filled it with absolute love and healed us all. We all brought Jeremy home, 25 years ago come July and I can’t help but think, “There but for the grace….”





“Is this Sam?” a voice on the other end of the line I picked up at The Wine Country. “Um, yeah” I replied not even close to recognizing the voice. “Hey, it’s Michael Sullivan, of Beaune Imports and I hear you’re coming to France with me in a couple months” I could hear the smile in his tone, until, “Um, I don’t think so” my flat and tight-lipped response. He then asked if he could talk to Randy and the next thing I know over the PA system I hear, “Sam, can I see you in my office?” took nearly a week for me to make my way to the back of the store that day. Each step sticking to the ground I knew and a trillion miles away from being ready to be planted on the one I didn’t. Finally made it back to Randy’s desk and there he sat, leaning back in his big puffy chair, hands laced behind his head, big grin spread across his sweet and loving face. I knew there would be no amount of arguing with him, although I would try no fewer than 20 times, that would make this not happen…I mean other than me quitting. I was being sent to France. Leaving the country and going on the trip that my beloved boss, my beloved Randy, had been dreaming of sending me on ever since he returned from the same trip. Probably even sooner. He was likely starting to push and pry at Michael while they were there. He knew something I didn’t. He had a faith and belief in me, that I didn’t. He and Michael suspected I would unfold, develop and thrive once standing in the soils, seeing the faces, smelling the air and feeling the life of that place pulse through the body and heart that had been seeking a place to belong. France. France became a part of me on that trip and I’ve yet to recover, nor do I wish to. Randy knew what would fill my bits of broken heart, it was finding a me I could be proud of. He knew and I can’t help but think, “There but for the grace…”





“Just get dressed babe. We can work this all out once we get there” my then boyfriend, now husband, holding my head in his hands after I had dropped to my knees not knowing what to do after getting a call, “You need to get here soon. She collapsed after calling 911 because she couldn’t breathe. They tried to resuscitate her but, well you’d better just get up here as soon as you can”…my mother, gone just a week after I’d seen her for her 55th birthday and just days after a rather heated phone call we shared. I often think of that night on the phone, the rage and sadness. The shattered bits of a woman that while not without regret, gave her everything to being the best mother she could be and now felt the very real getting up silently and closing the bedroom door as her kids began building their own lives. Her voice like a combination of needles and nails on a blackboard. The accusations and self-pity. The crying and the screaming. All I could do was sit at the edge of the bed I shared with the man that would just days later walk me though the longest and scariest night of my life, just sit and let her skewer me. Listen as her pain spilled in my lap and felt the little deserved nips at my soul when she brought up all she had done for me. 





I often wonder why I go there rather than the night I last saw her, her birthday party night when she was happy to have all her kids around her at one of her favorite restaurants. No, I go to that last night…the last time I heard her voice. The argument and the accusations. I think it might be because before she hung up, right after she yelled at me, her voice dripping with pain, “You don’t need me!” and I responded with a  tone smooth but forceful, “No mom, I don’t, but I want you in my life…isn’t that better? Wouldn’t you rather be chosen than needed?” her gentle sobs letting me know I had finally reached her. She heard me, if she felt me and just how much I actually meant it I’ll never know. I can hope and part of the reason I can…because of her and no matter how bad things were and how crazy she and our life got, she held on to hope. She taught me that. That and genuine love, in all its forms. Can’t help but think, “There but for the grace of…”





Two days. It was two days after seeing that “abandoned” house cart that on my way to work I saw another. Again my heart dropping to the pit of my ever-growing tummy, (fuck) as my eyes fell upon a cart of life left unattended. I actually felt my whole body go stiff and my eyes welled up with tears…until. Turn signal flicked as my car pulled into the left lane, sunken soul and a dreadfully sad face to match as my warm car moved past another lost home full of memories and belongings. The tick-tick-tick not nearly distracting enough to make me not think about what happened, what caused that person to leave everything they had, well all they had left. I lifted my head to check the light and that was when I saw him, way up the street, a thin youngish man, life stained hands pushing another cart ahead before trailing back to pick up the second one. Still a frightfully sad situation but this industrious albeit fractured person, he had more than many. Not as much as he wants or needs, but more than some. I kinda know just how that feels. Can’t help but think, “There but for the grace of….”







I’m looking at a travel itinerary that is stuck to the fridge that contains the foods I cook my family and friends and the wines that I get to taste and share with others…another trip to France, my seventh trip to Europe in 11 years, with an importer again but this time I was asked to come, for my palate, an importer requesting my advice as to what Champagnes she ought to be importing as well as some assistance in Loire and a quick pop over to Burgundy for fun. Me. Not-so-little old me.Unreal...





“So how did you hear about our store?” a question I just had to ask of a charming and astoundingly trusting customer that I saw for the first time today. One that asked me to pick out a mixed case of my beloved Champagnes, a mixed case, rare I assure you. “From your blog Samantha. I’ve been following you for years now and yours is a very different wine blog.” Everything went all spinny after that. I think I managed to choke out how floored and humbled I was as I was swallowing extra hard hoping that would distract me from blubbering like a simpleton and making a total jackass of myself. I stood there shaking and watching my skin erupt into a layer of bumpy flesh as this handsome man told me he was here visiting from Australia and wanted to come by and shop with us, because of this silly blog….just typed that and again with the tears, but least now they are ones of absolute pride and the kind of gratitude that I can feel pulling from the balls of my feet and run through me like a jolt of sheer joy, and pride. 





David, meeting you today, seeing your face as I bipped around my department, (in my most horrible baggy jeans and most faded shirt! Ugh, I wish you guys would give a woefully insecure girl a heads up once in a while, let me pinch my cheeks, curl my mop and slap on some glassy lip junk or something. Looked dreadful but this once, well the heart swelling made me not give a shit) grabbing bottles like a kid being set free in Toy R Us, your trust in me through what you read here, well I can’t help but think…Thank You.





To each and every one of the people that took a chance

A leap of faith

Saw something

Read something

Felt something here with me…

If it weren’t for all of you?



Well there but for the grace….





There are no words big enough

I get to be here
Because of You...

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

High On Believing






Man, where have I been lately? I can’t seem to bring myself to get fired up enough to slog out anything other than the occasional, somewhat buzzy, four sentence proclamations and blathering over on Facebook and the sometime comment over at my beloved HoseMasters blog. Not sure what’s going on per se but I do feel that some of the utter nonsense and redundant hissy fits by other bloggers and wine writers has created some kind of artistic and brain atrophy, that and likely some animosity as well. Hate to admit it but there you have it. When I get caught up reading some of the shit out there it makes me want to distance myself from the whining and pomposity completely. I’ve grown so weary in fact that I have opted to avoid even my own blog. Sucks actually. 






I have found tiny bits of verbiage inspiration by way of wines, the Champagnes I wrote about last landed upon my craving frame like a mouth taking bites along the back of my thighs and this past Friday night, Valentine’s night as it so happened, had me plunging my bits of desire into pools of glorious Burgundy by way of an astonishing micro-negociant by the name of Pascal Marchand. The people that showed up to taste and learn those wines from and with me, the heart-fluttering pride in the way the wines showed and how successful the numbers looked at the end of the night, those things all help and have in fact pushed me here, now but when I look about amongst my “peers” I find myself…well cursing a lot and ultimately wondering, “Am I am wine person or a wine writer” because it takes only a few spins around the interwebs to discover, those are, or can be, two very different things.



Came home Friday night punch drunk on Vosne-Romanee, Ladoix, Clos de Vougeot and Pommard, my longing to share, inspire and be inspired sending me all buzzy to the internet. Mistake. Huge mistake. Turned out that perusing the random articles and recommendations of my fellow wine…writers, ended up being just the thing that basically sewed up my craving and sent me right to bed, huffing and muttering phrases like “Asswads! Who are these people?!” and “Don’t they get it?” before I took a few chest filling breaths and let myself float to sleep on a comforting cloud of customer appreciation and that thing that only spending a few nights with your palate drenched in absolute beauty can give you. I found peace ignoring the asinine and not trying to once again figure out where I fit. But then there was the next morning….sigh.






Skimmed the incredibly long list of chocolate and chocolate type goodies, articles and which wines taste best with them. Pear and dark chocolate truffles and ZD Chardonnay anyone? Anyone that recommends Chardonnay with chocolate is NOT a wine lover, period. They are quite possibly, obviously, a wine pusher, but wine lover? Not even close. So after a scrolling through a couple dozen of those there were the anti-articles, the ones that rightly tell people that there is no wine that tastes great with chocolate, with maybe the exception of Port or Banyuls, and play the devil’s advocate. I felt myself sitting taller in my seat. My shoulders pulling back and growing in volume, my grin breaking through the grumpy face as I read the words we’ve been saying for decades now, “Yes!’ Here we go! Finally” dripping from my coffee scented lips as I trudged through a rather banal article published on some online paper of sorts. I scrolled and even though I agreed with the first bit of the “article” the lack of passion left even my eyes drying up. I persevered and found the deeper I got into the personality less “piece” I was reading yet another formulaic wad of shit dreamed up by a “Wine loving” writer. Fantastic. I read how this, professional (?) suggested sparkling rose with flavored popcorn, as in Creamsicle flavored popcorn in place of the wrongheaded chocolate and wine pairings, and she recommended that you travel on over to her “Award winning wine blog” to see the results of her, extensive research. Yeah…wine blog award winner. Perfect. 






I kept looking, hoping and seeking and was met with a wasteland of stupid bullshit. Valentine’s Day wines recommended because they are made by a husband and wife team? What?! Less stupid than some but still random babbling that does nothing for the consumer and just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I found a link to the worst of the breakfast cereal and wine pairing articles. Let me just say that again, the worst of the breakfast cereal and wine pairings, because there are a few now so there can be one that is worse than the other horrible ones, by Herculean proportions. 






So not only is this moron, or um, writer, suggesting that we eat Rioja with Frosted Flakes and Bordeaux with Honey Nut Cherrios, (and I’m sorry, what grown ass person is still eating those? Fuck cereal, where the hell are the Toaster Strudel and Pop Tart pairings?!) but this wad of an article writer even gave us a “Wines to avoid” section…because shit, no one wants to be the pink-faced idiot that pairs the wrong wine with their goddamn breakfast cereal. So this, professional, suggests, for the best pairings, for breakfast cereal mind you, that we “Forget about softer wines like Pinot Noir and Barolo, as the milk will overwhelm the wine. Also stay away from Champagne. The strong sparkling components do not pair well with the smoothness of the cereal and milk.” Because you know, when I think soft wine I think Barolo. ???!! Where the fuck did you read that genius? Pretty sure you’ve never tasted, or felt, Barolo if you call it soft, and if you are referring to the lightness of color, well you just yanked out your novice card and swung it about the internets. If you are illustrating the flavor or texture of wine by the color, well you are a tween and you should leave this pairing stuff to the grownups, you know, the people that actually taste and drink this stuff, please. 






Popcorn, chicken wings, Girl Scout cookies, wine making couples and cereal. Really? This is what we’re selling? I don’t get it. On one hand I can see that some might be trying to make wine less portentous by cramming them into food situations for “common folks” but in doing so, don’t they see just how bloody portentous they are being?! Insisting that wine go places where it ends up tasting like shit, because you think wine more sophisticated or refined is the height of arrogance and snobbery. Quit it. If you truly love and wish to promote wine you are doing it wrong, way wrong. Cereal and chicken wing pairings that suck, they don’t sell wine. They might sell you to some non-wine-loving editor but don’t fool yourself, (or for a second think that you are fooling me) doesn’t work and in the end makes wine the “yuck”. Another way to look at it is these writers, that supposedly love wine, are doing their best to sell themselves on the freelance market, by the pound, and to that I have to ask, “What does a pint of integrity cost now a day?” If you sell these articles and bullshit pairing ideas you are a very large part of the problem and you are actually doing more to increase sales in the booze business than in the wine one. You make us all look bad. Shame on you. And shame on those that encourage you….






So this. This is what I see when I run out seeking inspiration and that nibble that drives me to drink, worship, learn about and share wine? This and the never ending whining of critics and bloggers and their same fistful of arguments? Gack. This is the best huh? Popcorn and wine pairing? Way to set the bar. Whimper…



So okay. In order to fit, belong and be relevant maybe I ought to do some wild and crazy wine pairings of my own. Maybe it’s time for this wine lover to get her “don’t give a shit” on and sell myself on the murky stage of irreverence and quirky?! I mean, if I’m to be considered a wine person, or wine writer, I had better get in this here game right? I want to be able to call myself a wine writer dammit, I need to up the ante and junk…I can do this.






Wine for Life’s Situations





Jury Duty – we all know this is a total bullshit and obligatory life situation that we either have to do or go to jail for ignoring..or just ignore like my neighbor and best friend do, and have never been called, or arrested might I just add. For Jury Duty I recommend a wine that carries with it the same kind of bullshit appreciation, Cabernet Sauvignon. Who doesn’t want to do their civic duty? Who doesn’t love Cabernet? See, we can kill two groan inducing birds with one stone here. Drink Cabernet while waiting in that stinky room full of your peers, before you lie to get out of having to serve. 






Back to School Night Why? Why do they make us come to school, try and cram our huge, steak filled bodies into those tiny desks, nose all a-flicker with the industrial stank of Crayons and Elmer’s Glue, as some half-drunk teacher explains how they are forming our children’s minds, for us. For this particularly grueling event I suggest a flask of Paso Robles Zinfandel. Just dull the senses as quickly and deliciously as possible. Bonus is the juiciness of the wine goes swimmingly with gummy bears so…






 Gynecological Exam Easy Peesy! Champagne! I mean nothing says up to your elbows in vagina like the whisper of tiny bubbles. Sort of a cheater pairing actually. 






Kid’s Sleepover Tricky this one, but I think the key here is low alcohol. I mean you need to be at your sharpest, (possible while still dealing) when driving the wee ones to the ER for sutures after you chucked an empty bottle at their tiny heads for shaving the cat and washing each other’s hair with peanut butter. Moscato d’Asti, without question.






Smoking Jack Herer Pot Oh come on now, don’t act all stuffy here. The pot is for affect the wine is for the refinement. When smoking this particular earthy strain of weed that gives a euphoric and uplifting feel, I suggest Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. Goes perfectly with the sticky green flavors and the light-headedness, of both, makes it all sing. Or you and your buds will but whatever…





Smoking Headband Pot This giggle inducing and herbal weed calls for a wine that doesn’t try and complicate things. A wine that just lets you be and doesn’t challenge you when you are trying to get your giggle on, so Merlot, from Washington is the way to go here. Dark berry fruit and supple tannins are just the thing this herbal and black tea flavored…herb, is calling for. Avoid Champagne or sparkling wines…and cookies, as they will over tickle the fancy and induce the bends. 






Writing a Bullshit Pairing Article Gin. Lots and lots of gin….

I might just need a hug.