It's 1976 or thereabouts. I'm a fairly new Yeoman Third Class in the Coast Guard Reserve. It's a Saturday of my drill weekend. I come home, tired from a busy day and a long commute. I open the refrigerator to see what I might cobble together for dinner. The fridge is pretty bare, and there's an empty bottle on one of the shelves.
"If you're going to drink the last of the wine," I say to my husband, "don't put the empty bottle back in the fridge." There was about 1/3 of the bottle left, my husband and I having enjoyed the other 2/3 over the course of a couple weeks.
He denies having had any of the wine, a sparkling cranberry wine made by a friend of my father-in-law, Marshall. Marshall had gotten a few bottles from his friend, and had given us one.
Just then, our four-year-old daughter Elizabeth comes toddling down the hall from the bedroom she shares with her sister, who is six. She's happy. Too happy. REALLY happy. We look at each other, then back at our daughter. That explains the missing 1/3.
She's been into the sparkling cranberry wine, and put the empty bottle back into the fridge. Keys and I laugh, but I also remind him to keep a better eye on the kids when I'm not home.
When the girls are teenagers, we're swapping family stories, and we tell them about Elizabeth's adventure with the cranberry wine. We all have a good laugh.
48 years later --
Elizabeth has, about a year before, been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood. She's achieved remission, and her sister Marti has been her morale officer, coming Saturdays to visit, bring lunch, and play video games or watch silly TV shows with her. Then Elizabeth is feeling up to short road trips and shopping. So one day they go to a small town where Marti has heard there's a winery, not too far south of where we live.
When they return, they have a gift for us, that astonishes and amuses us no end . . .
. . . in repayment of a debt of long standing that Elizabeth owes us . . .
. . . a bottle of cranberry wine!
1 comment:
Your reaction was the best. Glad you enjoyed it.
And the wine was nice, too! Thanks for sharing.
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