Whisky In the Glass

I've a strong feeling it was drinking whisky what made me realize in part, that I was growing up. Good, hearty whisky, in a glass just made for my hand.

I don't mean the little nips like I used to take out of the decanter my parents had, the one that looked like an old fashioned fire wagon and sat on the end table we used to have in the living room. The bottle was beveled glass, and green-gold in color. It had all the little knobblies on the sides that just screamed 'classy'; classy for the mid-seventies, I guess. The bottle was where the coach would be, and the glasses sat in a little rack that I think was supposed to represent the horses. The whisky? Well, the whisky may have been complete shit, I wouldn't know because, well, how much of an expert on whisky can an eleven-year old boy be? All I know is, that we kids weren't supposed to drink it, so naturally that's what I did. I stole a swig every now and then when the 'rents were elsewhere, sucked it right out of the nozzle on the top, I did. Then coughed and gasped my way back to the bedroom wondering why in the world would anyone drink the stuff.

Yet, I never swore I'd never do it again.

And it wasn't the clandestine drinking I did as a teenager, swigging off a bottle of swiped by a friend, and huddled down between the cars in the school parking lot so no one would see us. Or while perched on the rustic throne of a picnic table at a local playground. Or sitting in the scrub woods of some nearby waste ground we used to use as a bike track. Jim Beam or Jack Daniels was the order of the day, because after all, they were the Dipstick of Masculinity when it came to a bunch of slightly misguided young males with more free time than common sense. You were The Shit if you could chug a few swallows of 'Jack Black' without coughing or puking.

I coughed once or twice, but never puked. I suppose that makes me The Sort-of-Shit. Nah, maybe just a dipstick, who once again wondered why anyone drank the stuff.

There was a gap of many years, ironically enough starting when I went off to college, that I didn't drink whisky. Beer was the order of the day, most days. The occasional shot of tequila found its way to my gullet, but not very often. Then one day about ten years ago, it got all up in my snoot that I like scotch. So I tried it, and found out that it was, most likely, what I had sipped so long ago (when I wasn't supposed to do). I was still trying to understand the attraction. The biting smokiness, the sting of the alcohol, the fumes that sometimes made me cough and shudder. There were some I sampled that only politeness and academic interest kept me from immediately spitting right back out. Additionally I had paid, sometimes a bit steeply, for the 'privilege' and did not want to waste it.

There was this evening where I was sitting at my desk at home, reading and listening to music, feet up. On the desk was a bottle of single-malt scotch that I had received as a gift. I was feeling quite 'old school' with my pour of a finger-and-a-half, and thinking myself quite fine. "Down the hatch!" and the shades of my past grinned in anticipation of the cough and shudder...

...but that didn't happen. Instead, I came to know that I was, whether I liked it or not, a 'grown-up'. I liked it, with nary a grimace or shiver.

In that swallow, I tasted the sting and the smoke, the sweetness and the bite. As it swirled in my mouth and warmed my gullet I realized I liked the prickliness of the whisky. I liked that it wasn't really that easy to drink it, if you expected it to be soft and accommodating. I liked that you have to treat it with respect, and even then it can sometimes reach up out of the glass and smack you. It was a drink that you had to accept on its own terms, good and bad, if you wanted to get full enjoyment out of it. Then came the epiphany. 

Holding that glass, feeling the warmth and the tickle of fumes in my throat, I realized that this acceptance of the thing on its own terms, to get the enjoyment? Well, that right there is a description of life. Life. 

I have gotten better at accepting life on its own terms, the joy and the bitterness, the salve and the sting. It dawned on me, finally, that embracing the contradictions instead of fighting them leads to a fuller and more satisfying experience. 

Not unlike a wee dram of whisky now and again, enjoyed in quiet contemplation. It means I'm growing up.

A question, dear readers: What was your grown-up epiphany?