For 20 years, I didn’t drink a drop. Then, out for dinner with a man who would grace my life for four short years, I succumbed to a glass of red. It was delicious. Tart, intense and astringent, I enjoyed every mouthful.
I have never been a heavy drinker. Admittedly, I went through episodes of binge drinking in my early twenties, but that was mainly to overcome social anxiety. Once inebriated, I took advantage of my impaired control and began to enjoy parties, rather than be the wallflower hanging out in the kitchen counting tiles. But that was a long time ago.
When I began to drink again, I would only do so at dinner and never at every dinner. Then Roger introduced me to the glass of champers on a Friday evening to celebrate the passing of another week. His philosophy was simple – celebrate if you have had a good week and celebrate if you made it through a tough one. Either way, you are a winner.
When he ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’, as he liked to quote, I was left with an unusually large glass vase filled to the brim with champagne corks. It was years’ worth of good and not so good weeks he had lived through, with and without me. I neither wanted to keep them, nor throw them away. In the end, I reached a compromise, took a photo of the full vase and kept perhaps 30 of the corks. They remind me of a life well-lived.
Now I carry on the tradition, at least most weeks. I can’t drink a bottle of bubbly on my own, but I can enjoy a piccolo, which is 200mL or almost two standard glasses. It is a perfect amount. I raise my glass and salute Roger, and the passing of another week. Cheers!
From Quill to Quote 