Memories don't get corked.


Tonight we had our anniversary dinner.  Jonah, Aaron, and Clara were invited, too.  My plan was to cook some grass-fed fillet mignon from my hometown of Oldham County.  That all went well, including my first use of my dad's awesome cast iron skillet over the gas flame on the grill.  Yummy broccoli and couscous accompanied.  Everybody enjoyed everything, except the boys and broccoli don't enjoy one another.  I also had planned to open the bottle of 1992 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that we brought back from our honeymoon.


When we were on our honeymoon we had an amazing day in Napa.  We visited Domain Chandon and learned the wonders of champagne and how it's made.  At Robert Mondavi I finally learned to like dessert wines with a Moscato d'Oro paired with divine shortbread cookies topped with a ripe raspberry.  The best tour was at Silver Oak, though.  Our admission price was the purchase of an etched Silver Oak Cabernet glass made by Riedel. During our tour they made sure that our glasses was never empty, filling it at every stop from the vineyard through the cellars.  They kept it filled with the 1992 AV Cab that they were about to release.  We were able to purchase three bottles before we left.  The first was opened early in our marriage on an occasion that I, regrettably, don't remember.  The second we opened with Tom to celebrate his passing of the bar.  There wasn't much wine involved in that celebration, though, because the bottle was corked.


Wine should be stored on its side.  This allows the wine in the bottle to keep the cork moist.  A moist cork is a healthy cork.  A healthy cork keeps the wine in and the air out.  When a cork dries out the wine may remain inside, but the cork also allows air to enter the bottle.  When air enters the bottle the wine is contaminated and develops a pretty nasty flavor, a putrid odor, and an ugly brown color.


Even though I had been really careful to properly store this wine that bottle had corked. Sometimes that happens.  I had held out hope that this last bottle would be good. If it was good, it would actually be spectacular - a 92 point wine in 1997, aged 15 more years.  I removed the foiled and lowered the cork screw.  As the corkscrew spiraled down little bits of cork climbed up the incline.  At that point I knew my hope was lost.  I carefully maneuvered the rest of the cork out, still losing a few bits down into the bottle.  I smelled.  Corked for sure.  I tasted anyway.  It was brown and it tasted brown.  I was pretty sad and told Cathy that I had hoped this one wouldn't' be corked.  Alas, it was.


Cathy said, "That's ok.  I still remember the day."  Even though we didn't get to taste our memories of that day, we still can remember being together.  We can remember the warmth of the sun and holding hands as we walked through the rows of vines.  We can remember the taste of those grapes that we took off the vines, spitting out the giant pits.  We remember starting off our marriage carefree, exploring a land that was completely new to us, experiencing all of the newness together.  We still strive to experience the newness of everything together.  We love having adventures, embracing new things simultaneously.  


The night we got the diagnosis we decided that it would be another adventure.  It might not be as fun as our other adventures, but we would do it together.  This adventure would be all new and even though we would take away our own individual memories of it, we would experience it together, side by side the whole way.


Along the same lines, but on a completely different plane, we had another adventure today.  Since this is kind of my journal in addition to a blog about Cathy, I have to write about today's adventure.  This afternoon I spilled a full bottle of loctite on my bare foot. For those of you are unfortunate enough to have an adventure like this in the future, let me tell you how Cathy helped me.  She got me a bottle of nail polish remover and a salt shaker and I sat in the bath tub for an hour making an neat purple salt paste and rubbing it all over my foot.  Most of it is off and my foot skin is really soft.  I also don't have any hair on my big toe.