The Rake Magazine

My husband and I found ourselves over the weekend in that gap between wedding ceremony and reception and desperately in need of a drink.

Now, I must admit, I'm a bit bewildered by the whole traditional formal wedding affair. It's always seemed to me more show than celebration, a day seized by the "happy" couple to make other people a) focus attention on them b) follow their directions and c) WAIT. There's the "everyone turn to look at the bride as she makes her way down the aisle" moment; the "you may not leave your pew until the newly married couple greets you" ritual; and then, of course, the "we must take several dozen photographs before leaving the church so you should hang out in the vestibule or on the street or in the empty reception hall waiting while we do so" tradition.

Which is exactly why I got married barefoot on the deck of a boat with only my children in attendance and a preacher (Mitch Omer, from Ode to a Sycophant fame, in fact) who got his license from the back of Rolling Stone. . . .then threw a big party two months later with a lot of food and wine and absolutely no requirements of the guests but that they come and enjoy.

But I digress.

We'd just left the church on Saturday afternoon, where the brightest moment of the ceremony -- for me, at least -- was the minister's recounting of the "love story" in Rocky. I've never seen Rocky, which sounds incredible, I know. But after his telling, I probably will. The anecdote had to do with the thug played by Sylvester Stallone falling in love with a plain woman who worked at a pet store then explaining to someone who questioned the romance "she's got gaps, I got gaps, together we fill gaps," which was as fine a description of the strange magic of marriage as I've ever heard.

So we were talking about this and dawdling along Dale Street in St. Paul, on our way to the reception near Cathedral Hill, when suddenly I remembered something wonderful: Il Vesco Vino was just around the corner!

So we went.

What a lovely interlude, a perfect place to fill the gap. Because first, this is a simple, warm, rectangular room lit with the sort of turnip-shaped fixtures you might imagine at an Italian carnival. But better even than this is Junior, one of the area's best and most unusual sommeliers. This guy KNOWS HIS WINE. He was trained at D'Amico Cucina and he's a friend of Bill's (Summerville, that is). But he's also, well. . . .just freakin' cool, in a way that most wine experts — I'm sorry, guys — simply aren't. The son of jazz saxophonist, Irv Williams, Junior has that low, blue, lazy, smooth-voiced style.

It's all an act, however, in that behind the laid-back facade is a man who keeps a sparkling bar and makes the best personalized wine recommendations in town.

I, for instance, love an earthy, sweaty red. ("Dirt," my husband will sometimes say when he sniffs the wine in my glass. "Terroir," I will respond. Just one example of our gaps.) So Junior poured me the Azienda Agricola Morellino di Scansano, a hot muddy Sangiovese that's full of plum and cherry with the strangest hint of banana underneath, also black roses, leather boots, and peat. Just the way I like my midafternoon, post-wedding wine.

John drank a far lighter and generally more approachable Nero d'Avola — again, selected by Junior — which tasted of raspberry and black cherry and finished clean.

And we sat, holding hands under the bar, until our wine was gone, at which point we said goodbye to Junior and reluctantly got up and headed to the clamorous wedding reception where there were too few tables for the guests and the only wine available was heavy and tannic and about as subtle as a brick to the head.

Sometimes, I find, it is in filling the gaps that the best of life occurs.

I would like to tell you that my daughter and I spend quality time together watching the Masterpiece series of Jane Austen stories: pretty, bonneted heroines practicing archery and dropping calling cards and plotting to win the hearts of handsome young men. I would like to tell you that. But it's just not true.

A few nights ago, in the interest of bonding, I sat down with her to watch (and I shudder, literally, as I type this) The Moment of Truth.

It's a game show. . . .sort of. Also a reality program, I suppose, in the sense that humiliating people seems to be the staple of these shows. It involves a "contestant" who agrees to answer something like 50 questions -- personal questions -- while hooked up to a lie detector. Then he or she goes on FOX-TV (which I'm embarrassed to say, I was not aware prior to this was one of the 8 channels we receive) and must answer an assortment of the same questions in front of three people: a spouse or partner, parents, friends, in some cases a boss.

"You won't believe it, Mom," my daughter said and invited me to sit next to her. (Do you know how rare this is??) So I did. And I didn't. . . .believe it, that is.

The questions start off easy: Do you belong to the Hair Club for Men? Have you ever gone through a co-worker's personal things? And by answering these "correctly" -- meaning truthfully -- the person in the chair wins something nominal, like ten grand.

Then they get weird, sick, and invasive. Also strangely banal. Have you ever had a sexual fantasy while in church? Have you ever touched a client more than was necessary? Have you put off having children because you're worried that your marriage won't last?

Now first of all, I've heard that men have something like 12-25 sexual fantasies a day. So how in the world could any guy be expected to make it through an entire hour-long church service without? Second, you need to define the word "necessary" before it's possible to determine what touch is or isn't. And finally, when on the brink of becoming a parent, isn't it normal -- healthy, even -- to question whether or not your marriage will last. . . .especially if you're the sort of person who will go on national television to talk about intensely personal things.

These questions strike me as tedious and rhetorical. I mean, do you walk up to strangers on the street and ask them if they masturbate? Or if they pick their nose while driving. No (I hope). You simply assume that they do. But it is not in your nature -- certainly it is not in mine -- to solicit the details.

And what have we come to if this is considered entertainment?

I'll tell you what I came to: I came to the point where I needed to cleanse. Say you spent an evening eating cotton candy and drinking root beer (again, I shudder); you'd need to spend the next day ingesting nothing but raw carrots and hot tea in order to undo the damage you'd done.

The same goes when the damage is psychic. Watching Moment of Truth was so sullying, in fact, that I needed to spend the rest of the evening talking seriously to my daughter about dignity (she was thrilled); listening to Mozart; and drinking a $70 Burgundy.

The Givry 1er Cru 2005 is made by Domaine Joblot. It has 13% alcohol and is a deceptive wine: so smooth at first it seems simple, like a single, ripe, ruby fruit. But if you pay attention, you'll find hints of lavender, rose, and nutmeg within the soft cherry base. As you drink and the wine breathes, it seems almost to wink: elements of orange zest, allspice, and just a breath of musk come zinging through. This is a vintage that was made for age: experts say the Givry 1er Cru may be cellared -- and will continue to improve -- for up to 15 years.

Still, I'm not sorry I drank it all, rather than waiting for 2023. I needed it as an antidote to the sleazy stream of "truths" I heard the other night. I'm hoping in 15 years the reality TV craze will have died down, and that when my daughter and I sit down together -- she at 28 and I at 56 -- it will be over a bottle of something equally as nice.

Typically, it is heat that frightens me. Perhaps this is because I grew up in Minnesota, but sweltering temperatures seem more sinister — thick and canopy-like and unavoidable — whereas cold has always struck me as surmountable. Until now.

It was just last week, on what I assumed then would be the coldest night of the year, that my son suffered a relapse of a condition called Autistic Catatonia. We imagine catatonic patients as still and statue-like. Frozen, even when they are warm to the touch. What we do not consider — what I forgot — is that catatonia actually signals an exponential speeding up of the brain; it is what doctors call a "paradoxical condition," meaning the body's stasis is masking a panic of mind. And it's often preceded by a bout of mania in which the afflicted individual moves wildly in an effort to shake off the coming storm.

It was in this incipient period that my son began wandering, desperately, after dark. It was 14 below zero the first night he stepped out the door and nothing we did or said could stop this giant young man.

We spent 24 hours, my husband, my younger son, and I chasing, coaxing, begging, warming. We slept in shifts. When dusk fell the following evening and the temperature began to drop again, we knew we couldn't last through another night. Finally, we called everyone we knew to call. They came, blowing through our front door with a killing cold. And they took my son away.

Tonight, the thermometer will go even lower. But my son is safe. Or rather, he is as safe as a fragile, shuttered soul can be. But there are other people out wandering. I know this, because I've come close enough to touch the life they have. And no matter where they seek shelter — in bus shelters, abaondoned buildings or skyways — it's unlikely they'll every truly get warm.

Even our house is failing to keep out the cold. Granted, it was built in the 1920's, and the windows are like loose dentures, rattling with every windy sigh. Our wine rack sits in the south corner of our dining room, and when I removed what promised to be a very nice bottle of Domaine Olivier Bourgogne Pinot Noir tonight, it felt as if it had been thoroughly chilled.

We opened it and toasted, my husband and I, in thanks that our son was not only inside but beginning, gradually, to emerge from his whirring state of mind.

But the first taste was not what we had hoped. "Maybe it's corked," my husband said. "It's awfully sour."

I swallowed a bit of wine, its cranberry flavor as sharp as a knife. "Let's let it breathe," I said, "and warm. I think it will be fine."

In fact, I, too, would have thought the wine was bad, but the finish was too nice. Corked and cooked wines always end badly: raggedly, with hints of sulfur, mold, or lye. This one did not.

We left the bottle open for 20 minutes, then poured individual half-glasses and warmed them in our hands. When we tasted again, the Olivier was entirely different: full and sweet and delicate, with scents of lemon and eucalyptus, and the flavor of wild strawberry, oak, and mint.

By the end of the bottle — and yes, in our relief, we did polish it off — this pinot noir had expanded kaleidoscopically. It was not at all the same as the chilled liquid we'd poured originally, two hours before. Never have I experienced such a profound change in a wine over the course of a couple degrees.

Watching my son come out of his delirium had been a little like this on a much grander scale. The doctors gave him 2 milligrams of Ativan (such a tiny pill!) and suddenly, he calmed to the point where he could, once again, talk and focus and move.

"What were you thinking?" I demanded as soon as he could listen to me. "When you went out in the cold. . . .do you remember? What the hell was going through your mind?"

He tilted his head and really pondered the question. After a full minute, he spoke. "Eric Clapton's Layla," he said soberly. "The second version — the acoustic one — not the first. That one. . . ." We'd been playing Cribbage and he glanced at his hand, as if to remind himself of the game. "I believe it might have been Eric Clapton with Derek and the Dominos. I like that version, too. But I don't think it was in my head at all the night I got lost."

Then he put down a card for the count. And that's how I knew the cold had receded and my son was back.

OK, I know what cheese is. And I also know — because I researched it once — why it exists.

In nomadic societies, back when people had to carry their food on their backs as they moved from place to place, and spoilage was a huge and potentially life-threatening issue, particularly in the heat, tribes discovered they could "preserve" their goat, cow, yak, or sheep's milk by putting it in a burlap sack, throwing it over their shoulders, and walking briskly. Agitation and warm, re-circulated air caused the milk to separate into curds (cheese) and whey. The latter, they would drink immediately. The former, however, would last them through the winter, providing protein, calcium, and fat. This makes sense to me.

Modern cheese-eating, however, does not. I happen to live with two voracious cheese eaters: men who love triple-cream bries and smoked goudas but will also go through entire blocks of sharp cheddar, Swiss, and monterey jack. Pizzas, enchiladas, quesadillas. Everything the world is hungry for seems to be smothered in cheese.

From a health standpoint, however, cheese has done an about-face. Whereas once it saved lives by providing sustenance during times of snow cover or drought, now it does little by my estimation than add things to our diets that few Americans genuinely need.

I rarely eat cheese. I would never choose it as an appetizer or a dessert. One exception: when it will improve my wine. Then I'm all over it.

I've done wine tastings with chocolate, with biscuits, and with fruit. Nothing — and I do mean nothing — brings out the unique flavors of wine better than a perfectly paired cheese. The right blue with a robust Bordeaux. Manchego alternated with a spicy Rioja. Chevre to accompany a dry Sauvignon Blanc.

This is nearly universal among the serious wine drinkers I know. Jack Farrell, owner of Haskell's and a staunch Catholic, once told me, "If you have a glass of vintage port and a little bit of Stilton cheese, that's when you know God’s in heaven and all is right with the world.”

He also told me that in 38 years of business, his only regret is that he didn't grow the cheese shop, a tiny mousehole of a store behind the downtown Minneapolis Haskell's on 9th Avenue.

Indeed, the cheese business has been very good to other wine sellers, including Surdyk's and Buon Giorno, as well as grocers that sell wine, beer, and other spirits, such as Byerly's and Lunds.

Now, France 44 is getting back into the game. They closed their cafe in December, co-owner David Anderson says, because while the lunch business was booming, evenings were dead. "We needed both to survive," he explains. Right now, workers are renovating the south side of the store, removing the deli cases and putting up more shelves so that come March, the liquor and wine business can expand.

But the front third of the space will be devoted to cheese — and only cheese. "It's the only food we'll carry from now on," Anderson says. "But we'll go deeper, carrying a much greater selection than we ever have before."

This is good news for the people of Morningside, that pocket where Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, and Edina meet. It's a little known fact, but they're nomads, you know. Occasionally, they've been to travel as far as St. Paul or Brooklyn Park. And you need sustenance for something like that: Curds in burlap and maybe a yak to ride, in case you get tired along the way.

Something terrible happened to my family this week.

What it is isn't important, and I'm not being self-effacing when I say that. Individual calamities mean little but to the people who suffer them. Tragedies occur every day: Little children are struck by cars and killed; young people are diagnosed with hideous diseases; old people die after slowly losing their minds. We assume, generally, that this is the natural order of the world. It is only when it is happening to us that we object.

There are those who learn to make peace with their suffering. They accept and accommodate and make alternate plans. This always reminds me of the maternity nurse who attended me when I was 21 and giving birth to a nine-and-a-half pound baby boy. "Just give in to the pain," she told me. "Work with it. Let it help you." Luckily, my husband at the time — a large man — stepped between us before I could kill her.

And later, when that child was diagnosed with autism (the event which preceded, in many ways, the crisis that took place just three days ago), I read Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People. A rabbi, Kushner wrote this spiritual self-help manual after the death of his own son, Aaron, from progeria. He deconstructed the Book of Job, claiming it proved that God is both benevolent and fallible. To suffer, Kushner claimed, is simply to be fully human. The secret, he said — this man who certainly knows anguish — is to embrace one's lot and look to God not for help but for strength.

I tried to find solace in his words. But I couldn't. Because no matter what the circumstances, I fight. Back in the early 90's, I abandoned Kushner and read the works of a man whose outlook on the world rather frighteningly matched my own. A chronic philanderer and suicidal alcoholic, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas better captured my philosophy, then and now.

So late yesterday afternoon, in the spirit of Thomas, I poured a glass of Elderton Shiraz 2003 well before the official cocktail hour. I didn't like this wine, frankly. It's pricey (a $40, 14% alcohol vintage that someone had given me as a gift) and I've no doubt it's good by objective standards, but it was far too jammy and bold for me. Dark fruit and red licorice flavors marched across my palate like a high school band, raucous and insistent but with no refining grace. I like my wine more subtle — as you know — yet, in the tradition of DT, I drank steadily simply because the bottle was there.

Then I read, as I have so many times:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And as they always have, these words gave me comfort. I'm a Jewish woman who doesn't know from acceptance. But rage, I get.