CORKAGE

Kim and Sid had been saving this bottle for a special occasion.  Then, one day, Sid left Kim while she was in the shower -- just walked out the door and never came back.  The good news: he did NOT take the bottle of Dom with him.  The bad news: this did NOT qualify as a special occasion (at least in Kim's mind, at the time), and it would have been inappropriate for me to suggest cracking the bottle that night.

So there it stayed in Kim's closet, still waiting for a special occasion.  A year passed.  A lot of sh-t went down, divorce lawyers were hired, papers were filed, false accusations were made ... and at the same time, life went on.  Many times Kim felt like something special, usually involving her career, was about to happen.  It never quite did (at least not in the way she had ideally hoped).  And so the bottle stayed sealed.

The other night, without my even suggesting it(!) Kim brought the bottle over to my and my wife's house.  No occasion.  She invited Miche and Laura over, too.  We cracked the bottle and toasted to friendship, and courage, and survival, and to the coming year.  And we drank and enjoyed the heck out of it. 

It was damn good.  A little bit yeasty, a little bit peachy, a little bit musty, it gave a little squeeze to the back of the palate before it floated away.  A hug maybe, a soft embrace.   The end of something.