There'll be No Wine This Year

The Tradition of Living Beautifully, Issue #68

There’s an old adage you’ve probably heard that says there’s always something to be grateful for. If you lose your job, be grateful you still have your house. If you lose your house, be grateful you still have your health. If you have bad health, be grateful for the moments you’re still alive. You can—and of course, you should—be grateful for the the most pedestrian of gifts, the ones easily taken for granted. Breath, for instance, a gift we completely ignore, is something you can count your blessings for even in the darkest moment. There are many, many people who no longer possess it. As women, we often lament things like how unruly our hair is, but start to lose it and you’ll realize how grateful you were for it just being there. I don’t know if people have always been this way, but modern man seems to focus on what he doesn’t have as opposed to what he does. We step on the head of what we’ve been given, searching the horizon for what we want. In my crankiest moments, where I commit the very real sin of having a paltry spirit, I check back in with the things easily taken for granted and remember the legion of things for which I have to be grateful.

The seasons, in their departing and arrival, in the special gifts each one carries, were designed (I get the feeling) to help us with gratitude. The seasons come and they go, we can only savor what they bring while they’re here, and then we have to let their little joys go until next year. This time of year in particular brings many special things that I love to enjoy—cranberries, pomegranates and homemade wine, to name just a few. While we’ve grown accustomed to buying whatever produce we want, as well as having access to aisles of wine bottles anytime of year, cranberries and pomegranates in particular are really only found this time of year, at least in my neck of the woods, and wine is made when autumn arrives and the days begin to get colder. These things mark the time, as once crops and harvests routinely did. Fruits and vegetables were available in their growing season; you either ate them fresh or preserved them, grateful they’d grown. After that you waited until next year for them to come around again. Food traditions, like making wine and jarring tomatoes, capturing what nature gives us when the food is at its peak, is an old-world remnant of living in tune with the seasons.

The other day my oldest son and I sliced open some pomegranate together. After cutting into the beautiful globe-shaped fruit and awing at the little hive like wonder of its inside, we popped out the crimson-colored seeds and tossed them into our mouths. It felt like late-autumn, winter magic dancing on our tongues; the pop, the vibrant sweetness followed by the subtle tart. Good thing I bought more than one, because that first batch of seeds disappeared quickly.

Tis’ the season for cranberries and pomegranates, and it’s also the season for wine making. As autumn arrives, those of us who enjoy the tradition of making wine in the basements of our homes head out to collect crates of grapes and begin the grinding and fermenting that leads to the creation of that lovely, pure wine. Unfortunately, this year, however, was not a great grape harvest, and we waited too long to purchase ours. No matter where we looked, everyone had sold out of the small amount they’d gotten their hands on. Which means there’ll be no homemade wine this year. We’ll have to wait the months out without a glass of it in our hands when friends come over and family sits around the table, until next season, when late autumn brings the gift of grapes back to us. It’s disappointing, naturally, and also a good reminder to not take things for granted: There may not always be homemade wine on the table, or cranberries or pomegranates on the dinner plate. It’s good practice to be grateful when it’s there before you, taking a moment to appreciate it, as opposed to simply consuming it.

So while I’m a bit glum about the fact that we won’t be able to pull up those purple jugs of wine from the basement this year, I felt a little tinge of satisfaction at being reminded that nature’s in charge, and we’re living in its rhythm, not the other way around, and that I can’t have everything I want when I want it, and that I have to respect the fragility of it all, the coming and going, the waiting, and to be grateful when and if it comes around again. It’s been a good reminder to savor the seasons, and the fruits each one bears.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, friend.

Thanks for being here with me, truly.