That was the way it began
So a dear friend that we got to know in Alaska many many moons ago came to town and spent last Friday night with us. When we met him, Mark worked at Anchorage's best wine store and was also a culinary school grad looking to open a restaurant.
I want to make you understand I'm talking about a lifetime plan
In Alaska, Mark was married to Sue. They eventually had a child, a remarkable golden boy that we met in the hospital the day he was born, and then they moved to Bellingham which Bob and I would also eventually move to.
It ended all too soon...
Two or three years after we arrived the child, age 9, died suddenly of meningitis. Calvin's death destroyed the marriage because just about the only thing they didn't have in common was a system for grieving, so Sue moved to Chicago and married a woman and Mark stayed here and married someone else. We went to his wedding. Neither of their marriages survived, then Mark, bankrupt from the series of disasters his life had been and near homeless but for friends' sofas, met and moved in with a hot blonde in Edmunds with a house and two kids. They became engaged.
Would it work out right...
It ended before they got to the altar. He's one of the nicest but unluckiest people I know--always on the edge of happiness but somehow never quite getting there. In spite of it all, he manages to keep smiling. Mark now lives alone in Oregon but returns here annually on the anniversary of his son's death.
Friday night, it was late...
After another event on Friday night the three of us stayed up to open a 2004 Chapoutier La Sizeranne Hermitage which I'd been saving for one of Mark's visits. We both tasted our first La Sizz, a 1990, together in Alaska. That one was monumental. This one was corked.
Older times we're missing / Spending the hours reminiscing
So I went back to the cellar and came back with this gem, a 1986 Penfolds Bin 389, fittingly the last bottle in my cellar acquired during our transformational years of discovering wine together in Alaska. Inky black, and picking up some soy sauce notes that foretell the end of days, but still a fun and friendly wine that unlocked a lot of memories about the people we knew and times we've shared over the years.
And the years roll on.