Would that simply exclaiming “Honey, I’m home” magically check all of the baggage accumulated at work at the door. Sometimes, you need that pause, that palliative comma in the middle of a long sentence.
My father was a wine man. We made our own every year. It was good wine.
But when summer came around, there were days — or rather express moments — when a glass of red was no match for a bottle of ice cold beer. Like after work to bridge into the supper hour as deliberately as humanly possible.
My dad loathed arriving home from work and having it bleed indistinctly into mealtime. He maintained that the interval between the workday and the reasons you went to work every day deserved acknowledgment, its own timeslot.
That beer was the hourglass that studiedly marked the transition from work to home one granular sip at a time.
My fondest recollections, however, of my father and his beer usually followed mowing the lawn or tending to the vegetable garden on a radiant sunny day. I can picture him now in what became his iconic manner of enjoying a cold beer in his later years, gently rocking on the sling swing under the apple tree, drenched shirt hanging from a branch and whirling in the wind, straw hat sitting by his side like a faithful companion.
These were moments dedicated to savouring a sense of accomplishment, to toast a job well done. The hydrating benefits didn’t hurt. My mom would invariably pair the beer with something to nibble on, like taralli. Grazie, my love. Just the beer.
But it was never just about the beer. It was about the purpose wrapping his hand around a bottle of beer had the power to summon.
My father drank his beer mindfully.
Until right after Labour Day, because that’s when wine-making season beckoned.