Decades of History

Grandpa will be 89 on March 26. He was born in 1918. When I think about that, it is a little unfathomable. He has so many decades of memories. He lived through wars, depressions, over 20 Presidential terms, computerization of work, fast cars, nuclear escalation, and over 60 years of Grandma's cooking. He's hiked up Mt. Everest, traveled through Africa, the Middle East, South America, and who knows where else. When he was lying feebly in a hospital bed, only loosely aware of what was going on around him, it was hard to remember how experienced and competent he is at life.

I have spent a lot of time with Grandpa over this past week. He had a lot of time alone in a room to reflect on his life and talked about he kept going back to growing up on a farm in Iowa. It struck me how much our early childhood stays with us. It wasn't the time he spent in Japan as an architech, his wedding day, the birth of his children, the sights he had seen, or the work where he spent most of his adult life that he kept coming back to. He talked about his sister and milking cows. I feel like I have forgotten large chunks of my own childhood and I am 50 years closer in time to it that he is to his own. I wonder if the memories lost or repressed will return when I'm lying in a hospital bed in my days of twilight. So much of what we carry on our shoulders every day -- the stuff that makes us bend over decrepit, wince at the thought of getting up, avoid looking at our responsibilities directly -- isn't what sticks at the end. I guess that's somewhat comforting.

I watch Grandpa experiencing this reflection on his life. I see he has certain regrets and desires to make amends, tries to be less harsh and inpatient, and appreciate people who are important to him in a more expressive and verbal way. It makes me a little sad that I have not taken every opportunity to get to know him and hear more of his stories. He has almost 90 years worth of stories and I've barely scratched the surface. Most of our conversations over the years were light and trivial. I talk to him in short sentences, straining to be heard over his increasingly poor hearing. The speaking in short sentences made my topics more simple, my comments more simple, my questions more simple.

I need to remember how full his life and understanding is and take advantage of what opportunity to hear stories and tell him some of my own remain.

I love the little details of our lives that you forget about shortly after they happen. Or they are so insignificant that they don't seem repeating to other people but they make you smile: the image of Grandpa as a young man, milking the cows and squirting milk toward the transient barn cats that were sheepishly lurking around waiting for just such an occurence, and jumped at the milk before it could even touch the ground.

What It's All About

About a year ago, Chad sent an email out to a number of wine-drinking friends asking something about what wine meant to them or something to that effect. Lamely, I mulled over the question, intended to write a thoughtful response, and never got around to writing it out. Anyway, answering that questions is part of my impetus for writing here. Wine is important to me. It is deeply connected to where I come from and occupies much of my attention. (As Jesse remarked: What is the difference between drunks and alcoholics? We drunks don't have to go to stupid meetings all the time.)

Drinking wine is about community. Its about sitting around the table on the front porch with the people we love (and sometimes people we can barely tolerate - but that's more of a mai tai kind of night), eating a meal we made with our hands, drinking wine from grapes we harvested, and talking -- always talking, usually about everything and nothing, and everybody all at once. Wine evokes memory of people and moments, and it connects us to the same rituals of feasting, celebrating, and relating to our clan that our oldest ancestors engaged in.

That's part of why wine is important to my life. And the people that are around that table are what is even more important to my life. And it is stories about them that I want to write about here.

The first story

Regardless of where my life takes me, my heart remains safely nestled up in the hills on the property where I was born. Every year I return to pick grapes for my father. The vineyard is small and we recruit friends and family to pick on the weekends. The work is strenuous but there is something comforting and wholesome about being out in the early morning in the hills that look over the Napa Valley, trudging along the rows with your bucket, your knife and your back bent. Most mornings, the valley is an ocean under a blanket of fog with the opposing mountains emerging as islands in the distance. Hot air balloons rise above the fog and the harsh city noises carry up the canyon, muted through the moisture.

Picking is one of the most social events on the hill. People partner up and choose a row, moving from vine to vine, gossiping, laughing, and complaining. Above your own conversation you hear the murmuring and outbursts of your neighbors, culminating in shrieks as a grape fight erupts. Jesse, the neighbor and first cousin who my dad fires on a biweekly basis, is the bucket runner. Responding to bellows of “BUCKET!” he walks the rows to pick up buckets brimming with zinfandel, leaving behind a fresh bucket and his peanut gallery comments. Competing with the crows, my sister and I squawk our rendition of “Picking Cab Sucks” to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” Meanwhile, at break time, my artist-vintner-winemaker father, in Homer Simpson mode, slinks off to the truck in search of “doooouuughnuuts.”

There are rules to follow: First rule is Clean Clean Clean; second rule is Safety First; third Rule is Don’t Make Eye Contact; and the Fourth is Don’t Mention the Unmentionable. The first two are obvious; the latter refer to ex-wives and hostile neighbors. In direct violation of the Rule, the Unmentionable is the favorite topic of discussion.

Picking is the soul of our winemaking. The people, the laughter, the bitterness, and the love that gets crushed into the fermenter along with the grapes is raw and real. They are the needle and threads of the tapestry that the vineyard weaves into my life.

originally written in 2002