Lips That Touch
I love living in Utah. As a convert to the LDS Church, I feel “blessed with every fiber of my being” to be here. Really and Truly.
HOWEVER, there are things, frankly, that I sometimes miss about Colorado and not being a Mormon and one of those is drinking. It’s not that I actually drank all that much before the great baptism. I have never been a person who likes to spend money on liquids. I don’t like Look-aid, or chamomile tea, or Postum for that reason. Too much work, too much money. I have always thought that water was free and on tap so why bother? But there is a whole aesthetic behind drinking with my family that I miss.
First, I have to say that the number of alcoholics in out Irish Catholic family is, of course, embarrassingly high. We could probably fill two or three AA meetings a week, in our own, with no outside help. There are few among us who have not been 12-steppers at one time or another. I once took a friend, LDS, to check into a dry-out facility and they took her family history. Ha! You call that a family history? Let me tell you, I can count the number of non-alcoholics in my family on my hand.
But the golden glow of champagne in a crystal flute held up against candle light, the rich smell of good red wine, the nose-tickle of ages scotch, the warmth of brandy, I miss those. Brandy and cigars and soap. That’s how my dad smelled. He laughed too loud and talked too long when he’d had a brandy after dinner, but that was part of my dad.
When our family went to France the summer after my senior year of high school, we went to see the wineries: huge beautiful old houses with long winding driveways. WE went to small country restaurants and ate soft buttery cheeses and wonderful French bread, and I had my first small glass of wine with my mom as an adult. We sat on arbor-covered back porches while the owner served us first one course and then another. We sat in the sun and laughed and talked and we enjoyed some of our best times together as a family.
My parents came home from that trip and spent several years trying to make their own wine—it was a trendy thing to do at the time. It seemed like all of our friends had big wooden barrels of homemade wine in the garage, sort of like 30 quarts of peaches and three bushels of tomatoes in the food storage were to your mom and dad. We made gallons of awful tasting stuff, and one memorable day, the last of the wine project, one of the barrels burst leaving a giant slosh of a purple stain under the cars.
When we were little, my sister and I would go around the living room after a party and drink up all the ends of the champagne glasses, which was counted as wildly funny at the time. When I was seventeen, my dad took me to New York and we went to plays and shopped and when we went to dinner, the waiter would pour me wine when he served my dad.
All of which probably sound pretty horrible to you if you’ve never grown up this way. But we thought that going to family reunions with a bounch of cousins that we didn’t know on my Aunt Helen’s side of the family sounded horrible. And maybe fore your, that was terrific.
All this was brought to mind this week because we went to my niece’s wedding in Vail where the champagne glowed, and everyone filled their glasses and laughed and sang—and it all seems very happy sometimes when you’re the person looking at it from the outside. We were okay though, because pretty soon they cut the cake, and we had all those carbs to fuel our jolly little hearts. Plus, after awhile, you realize that in a half hour none of the drunk people are going to remember anything you say and that you will still be having a good time.
But growing up, drinking was just part of our lives. Way too important a part as it turned out because there are some not so great problems associated with the fallout, for dinkers and nondrinkers alike, in a family.
Someone once told me though, that they thought wine would be allowed in heaven because it was just too good to miss. I don’t actually believe that, but it would be an interesting idea theologically if it turns out to be true.
HOWEVER, there are things, frankly, that I sometimes miss about Colorado and not being a Mormon and one of those is drinking. It’s not that I actually drank all that much before the great baptism. I have never been a person who likes to spend money on liquids. I don’t like Look-aid, or chamomile tea, or Postum for that reason. Too much work, too much money. I have always thought that water was free and on tap so why bother? But there is a whole aesthetic behind drinking with my family that I miss.
First, I have to say that the number of alcoholics in out Irish Catholic family is, of course, embarrassingly high. We could probably fill two or three AA meetings a week, in our own, with no outside help. There are few among us who have not been 12-steppers at one time or another. I once took a friend, LDS, to check into a dry-out facility and they took her family history. Ha! You call that a family history? Let me tell you, I can count the number of non-alcoholics in my family on my hand.
But the golden glow of champagne in a crystal flute held up against candle light, the rich smell of good red wine, the nose-tickle of ages scotch, the warmth of brandy, I miss those. Brandy and cigars and soap. That’s how my dad smelled. He laughed too loud and talked too long when he’d had a brandy after dinner, but that was part of my dad.
When our family went to France the summer after my senior year of high school, we went to see the wineries: huge beautiful old houses with long winding driveways. WE went to small country restaurants and ate soft buttery cheeses and wonderful French bread, and I had my first small glass of wine with my mom as an adult. We sat on arbor-covered back porches while the owner served us first one course and then another. We sat in the sun and laughed and talked and we enjoyed some of our best times together as a family.
My parents came home from that trip and spent several years trying to make their own wine—it was a trendy thing to do at the time. It seemed like all of our friends had big wooden barrels of homemade wine in the garage, sort of like 30 quarts of peaches and three bushels of tomatoes in the food storage were to your mom and dad. We made gallons of awful tasting stuff, and one memorable day, the last of the wine project, one of the barrels burst leaving a giant slosh of a purple stain under the cars.
When we were little, my sister and I would go around the living room after a party and drink up all the ends of the champagne glasses, which was counted as wildly funny at the time. When I was seventeen, my dad took me to New York and we went to plays and shopped and when we went to dinner, the waiter would pour me wine when he served my dad.
All of which probably sound pretty horrible to you if you’ve never grown up this way. But we thought that going to family reunions with a bounch of cousins that we didn’t know on my Aunt Helen’s side of the family sounded horrible. And maybe fore your, that was terrific.
All this was brought to mind this week because we went to my niece’s wedding in Vail where the champagne glowed, and everyone filled their glasses and laughed and sang—and it all seems very happy sometimes when you’re the person looking at it from the outside. We were okay though, because pretty soon they cut the cake, and we had all those carbs to fuel our jolly little hearts. Plus, after awhile, you realize that in a half hour none of the drunk people are going to remember anything you say and that you will still be having a good time.
But growing up, drinking was just part of our lives. Way too important a part as it turned out because there are some not so great problems associated with the fallout, for dinkers and nondrinkers alike, in a family.
Someone once told me though, that they thought wine would be allowed in heaven because it was just too good to miss. I don’t actually believe that, but it would be an interesting idea theologically if it turns out to be true.
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