I thought this January would be like all the rest of them, with me swearing I won't be like all the minions, i.e., taking stock of my life, making resolutions, etc. This year is a little different, however, seeing as how I didn't think Ma would still be here, and marveling most days at the strange wonder that she still very much is. I never do the resolution thing, having been a gym rat for years and having given up smoking in my early-ish 30s (ok, right around 35, you know when they really start to threaten you with blood clots and heart attacks if you are on birth control, and really, I was always a closet/social/smoke while drinking type, but still, that shit had to go), and I'm usually pushing myself to figure the next thing out in my life, so I've just never needed the new year to make me resolve to do anything. Such an impressive self-starter with amazing willpower I am!
Sort of. I am embarking this month on what is hiply known as "Sober January" around these parts, and perhaps everywhere else. It's mainly because my nautropath wouldn't give me any more thyroid pills to take off these annoying fivetoseven pounds that I've been trying to lose for six months, even when I asked nicely. She turned to me and said, "How much wine are you drinking?" To which I said, "Define "how much." And she laughed and said I was never going to lose those stubborn pounds unless I eased up on the sauce for a bit. Damn. And it's true, never have I enjoyed wine so much or so much of it as in the last oh, say 19 months. There's been a lot of, "Should I have another glass? Oh right, my mother is dying. Fuck yes I will."
Now, I come from a long and steady line of alcoholics, so there has always been sort of a red alert quality to drinking at all, mostly from Ma. I don't think she is wrong that it pays to be aware of the issue, given oh, genetics, etc., but as I have explained to her since my early 20s, booze has never really been my thing. That was my sister's thing, and she was much better at it than I. My thing was food, then boys, then men, then lots and lots of therapy. At any rate, welcome to Sober January, everybody! It's both easier and weirder than I expected it to be, mainly just to change the habit of going for a drink - either to meet up with friends or a post-work unwind or just because, say, my mother is still dying. I'm a little over week in, and I'm feeling like as time goes on, it's getting to be less of a thought or an issue, however, a big glass of red hasn't ceased to sound delicious. Not even a little bit.
When I first decided to do this, I wasn't going to tell Ma, for fear she would worry that I had a problem, but in chatting the other day it came out, and she seemed fully nonplussed by it. Very sweetly the next day, she asked me if I might want to meditate with her every day this month too, since I was doing this "cleanse." I agreed, half hoping she would forget, because as of late, the lady forgets everything, like what she had for lunch 20 minutes before.
The following day, I went about my business, and then she said, "So, are we going to meditate?"
"Shit," I said. "I thought you'd forget."
"Oh," she said. "No. It's about the only thing I can remember at this point."
And so we have been, almost every day since she suggested it. She asked me a few days in, "Do you like meditating?"
"I like meditating with you," I said, which is true. The world disappears when we sit together, never mind the fact that my brain barely stops long enough to catch its breath. I am usually making lists about the next five things I have to do or how much time I have to change my clothes and get to the gym or to work. But there are these pretty amazing crystalline nanoseconds that happen when I imagine that the two of us are out there together floating in whatever it is out there.
Sometimes, I think she sleeps through it. Sometimes I wonder if I do too. But when the alarm goes off, there she is, saying Namaste and putting her one good hand up to her forehead while she bows down to me, to her guru, to the universe. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up on a daily basis when the month is over, but I take small solace in the fact that it will be something I can do when she's gone, when I'm missing her, and that maybe for a few minutes it will feel like she's still here. As for the red wine, well, all things in moderation, right?
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