A stroll down memory lane

This morning Matt and I were recounting our stories of being knocked out. In elementary school, some kid kicked a basketball across the blacktop and it hit me in the head. A few minutes later, I became aware of voices surrounding me in the blackness of post-black out and I heard the yard duty lady cautioning the other kids to "Move back. Give him room." I heard one of my friends informing her that "it's a girl". Ah yes, my ambiguous gender phase. (Really, it was just the haircut). This was a few years earlier, but basically most of my childhood was plagued by one bad haircut after another.

Thanks to the kodak gods, I do not have a picture of my "Pat Riley" phase, or the hideous peach polka dot three tiered ruffled dress I sported with the over-gelled slicked back hair for my Sixth grade graduation.



In addition to recalling nightmares of haircuts past, the olden days came up in conversation recently when Lore mentioned, as we were celebrating Travis' 30th birthday by suckering him and his friends into a weekend of free labor (during which we labeled wine AND picked grapes all in the same weekend!), that it was also Sky's 30th harvest.


Thirty years of harvesting grapes. That is a lifetime! (Well, a lifetime if you are a young'un like Travis, and almost a whole lifetime if you are a wise 32 year old, but no where near a lifetime if you are of the older Olds variety, like Lore, or Grandma, who just celebrated her 89th birthday this week!). I have harvested at Sky for twenty-five of those thirty (I only missed 1995, 1996, 1998, 2002, and 2003).


Some of those years blend together in my mind, while other moments and eras stand out distinctly. Just as the vines are gradually changing and aging, and some even being replaced by new vines, so too has the community of people who support Sky and who are Sky changed.

When I was younger, many of our volunteers were architectural colleagues of my Grandfather's; later there were crews of chefs and restaurant staff; most recently, you can barely pick a vine without running into a lawyer. Each era brings with a new chapter with a different vitality, menu, sound and set of running jokes.

And even more so lately, a new generation. We have had my grandparent's generation of folks, my parents', us kids, and now, the kids are having kids.


This year was Isobel's second harvest, and Eva and Ellison's third harvests.

And in the Sky spirit of wining and dining, I believe all three kids ate enough grapes to turn their insides purple and partook of the harvest dinners with glee. I especially loved how all three seemed to love the duck above all else.

Iso quacked as she worked on her bone...






Ellison woke up the morning after Amy's duck leg dinner asking his dad for duck...



























... and Eva finished two legs off all by her lonesome!



Now those are Sky kids if I ever heard of any. And I hear that there are more to come...

We can't wait!