After Asun and Daniela left for Madrid on Sunday, I returned to an apartment still dressed in the typical rags of "party aftermath". I didn't have the energy to really clean up but felt compelled to get started with some of the basics. At the least I wanted to get the bottles and glasses out of the dining room and back to the kitchen or to the recycling bin. Lots of half filled (never half empty) glasses, and several bottles of wine in various states of consumption. And a bottle of uncorked Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage that was still almost full. A little part of me thought, damn, that's a forty dollar bottle of champagne gone to waste. That's no good. (Well, maybe if I had served our friends the bubbly before 1 am they all would have had a second glass...) I had a brief flashback to a former reality, thinking, hey, throwing out this stuff is a sacrilege, it's got to be drunk up. But of course, I didn't touch it, and I smiled to myself as I paraded the bottle to its date with the drain of the kitchen sink. My decision, my choice. Celebrating 50 stone cold sober. Who coulda ever guessed it? Not me, not some time ago anyway, not, for example, at 40. For most people it's an insignificant detail. You drink a little, you drink a lot, or you don't drink at all. Doesn't matter. But for me, I decided it does matter. And some days it feels almost as if I've forgotten why it matters. In any case, I clinked bottle to faucet in a strange, solitary, and satisfying toast. Having already made toasts to family and friends, I could now make one more: to the inebriation of Málaga's sewers! It was actually a good laugh watching those bubbles disappear, gurgling all the way down. A simple postscript to a good party. And postscripts, coming on the heels of endings, are always beginnings.
2.24.2009
Postscript
After Asun and Daniela left for Madrid on Sunday, I returned to an apartment still dressed in the typical rags of "party aftermath". I didn't have the energy to really clean up but felt compelled to get started with some of the basics. At the least I wanted to get the bottles and glasses out of the dining room and back to the kitchen or to the recycling bin. Lots of half filled (never half empty) glasses, and several bottles of wine in various states of consumption. And a bottle of uncorked Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage that was still almost full. A little part of me thought, damn, that's a forty dollar bottle of champagne gone to waste. That's no good. (Well, maybe if I had served our friends the bubbly before 1 am they all would have had a second glass...) I had a brief flashback to a former reality, thinking, hey, throwing out this stuff is a sacrilege, it's got to be drunk up. But of course, I didn't touch it, and I smiled to myself as I paraded the bottle to its date with the drain of the kitchen sink. My decision, my choice. Celebrating 50 stone cold sober. Who coulda ever guessed it? Not me, not some time ago anyway, not, for example, at 40. For most people it's an insignificant detail. You drink a little, you drink a lot, or you don't drink at all. Doesn't matter. But for me, I decided it does matter. And some days it feels almost as if I've forgotten why it matters. In any case, I clinked bottle to faucet in a strange, solitary, and satisfying toast. Having already made toasts to family and friends, I could now make one more: to the inebriation of Málaga's sewers! It was actually a good laugh watching those bubbles disappear, gurgling all the way down. A simple postscript to a good party. And postscripts, coming on the heels of endings, are always beginnings.
