Pinot and Porter and Jack, Oh My!

After I show Mom around the house and she marvels at every room as though they hold the secrets of the Pyramids of Egypt, we decide to join Bill on the porch. Bill has been marveling at the bar selection with the same sense of wonder and excitement.

Mom is nearly manic in her joy at finally being here. The kids, the place, the nearness of the achievement of her goal to lure Bill north for the remainder of their natural lives.

She decides to give my daughter her birthday gift a few days early. Money. How thoughtful to have put so much effort into the careful selection of a perfect gift for the granddaughter you see twice a year.

I try not to read too much into the early gift. I am skeptical about the timing though. Estelle and Bill are supposed to stay with us through the actual birthday. Does this mean they are leaving early?

Since Mom’s birthday is a few weeks away, I decide to give her the gifts she’d prefer I keep in exchange for an invitation to Christmas for my brother. No way. She is getting the birthday gift – or at least the ones I have with me at the moment.

The first is a set of drink holders – the long-stemmed spikes that you poke into the ground, the tops of which spiral around to form a cylinder – perfectly shaped for holding a highball. How practical.

And because she has always loved country music, and the artists she likes are all dead and are not producing anything new – a CD of the only quasi-country artist I actually enjoy and think she will, too – Raul Malo and the Mavericks. We put on the CD (Mom pours herself the first of several pints of wine) and we take seats outside on the porch with Bill and his pal Jack Daniels.

Mom and Bill regale us with stories which are coherent and entertaining albeit loud and of iffy subject matter at this point in the evening. The sun has begun to sink low in the evening sky and folks have begun to come out onto their porches to enjoy the waning hours of a beautiful day.
And suddenly Mom is on her feet inviting my daughter to dance to “Here Comes My Baby.” And just a few Texas Two-Steps into an otherwise joyful scene, Bill bellows to my daughter, “Watch yourself, sweetheart. Grandmom isn’t wearing a bra!”

Oh good. Mrs. Harris is choking on her 5 pm martini across the way.

Exactly one hour into the visit and we have our first social blunder. Probably not a record, but darn close.