I Like Windows

Louise and I aren’t drinkers and never have been really. I suppose I should mention that I am talking about alcohol. I am in favour of water and the various ways it is served. We aren’t opposed to drinking, it is just that I (notice I am “I” now) have never really seen the point of it. Oh sure, there is nothing better if you want to get drunk and stupid, but I can manage the stupid part without any external help at all. I don’t particularly like the taste of most alcoholic beverages and I don’t really believe people when they say they do like the taste. My limitations I know, but there it is.

 

I do drink when it is appropriate, or on those very rare occasions when I have a hankering for something alcohol it is usually Baileys. When we are visiting, I will bring a bottle of wine, but I have no intention of ever drinking it unless I absolutely have to. When drinking people come over to our place, they have learned by now that I probably won’t have anything other than Baileys or some wine that I have been saving to cook with. I do have a can of beer from the “88 Olympics that I have been saving for a special occasion. There was a time when I would stock beer for drop ins, but we don’t get many drop ins so I don’t usually have beer in the house. I wonder if there is a correlation there.

 

The last time we had family over for dinner, my son brought a bottle of wine to enjoy with dinner. People used to enjoy a cigarette with dinner when I was a boy, and that didn’t make sense either. I know I am in the minority and in all probability I am wrong in as many ways as you can count. Brendan reached into the hutch for a couple of wine glasses and brought out two pottery wine glasses as a joke. I don’t know why, but that bothered me and still does. Those two wine glasses were acquired from a fellow craftsperson in trade about 35 years ago. Its funny how something so meaningless can bother you.

The whole hutch is filled with mostly unused glasses, plates and assorted serving dishes. I was dusting today and have brought most of them into the light for the first time in a long time. There are wine glasses I received at a soccer banquet when the kids were still in single digits age wise. There are a couple of brandy snifters that Louise got from a Christmas weekend spent in Kananaskis country with the company she was with at the time. There is a ceramic, triangular mug that I stole from Sunshine Village when I worked there. It was the mug that they served hot, buttered rum in and if I had stayed at the ski hill, I would have become an alcoholic quite easily. There is a glass bottomed stein that Louise got at the Montreal Playboy club before we met. She also stole a beer mug from a curling club by hiding it under her poncho. The engraved silver champagne glasses from our wedding with our names and the date of our wedding are in the hutch as well.

 

When I am dead and gone, none of those things will mean anything to anyone and will more than likely end up at a second hand store or in the garbage. It is silly attaching my memories to these cheap little trinkets, but maybe that is just the way I am wired. Maybe that’s why I like second hand stores so much, everything in there is a window into the forgotten life of someone that meant something and helped get the planet to this place in time.

I like windows…