Paper Moons

I spent an hour last night with my hand on her heart, feeling it feebly bump, telling me it was probably time. She’d grown thin from renal failure, but those eyes, they still burned with that distinct feline conviction.

I think people who say they don’t like cats misunderstand their power. While dogs are rarefied ideals of energy and optimism that encourage us to be our best selves, cats are much more humanistic, prone to moodiness and fits of fancy.

Dogs are motivational posters. Cats are mirrors.

Pandora – Dora for short – was my secret therapist of 13 years. I can’t even remember how many personal truths I whispered to her, knowing her judgement was silent, and her silence absolute. I’d lie on the floor next to her, talking about all the hardest and worst things in life, and her yellow eyes would just stare back, gently. My stresses would fall into her fluff. Her powerful purrs reverberating against the rhythm of my heart.

She saved me more times than she knows. Part of the adult I am is the work of that cat, how she healed my heart, and warmed me, physically and emotionally.

She was my first trial at being a “dad.” The first thing my wife and I loved together, outside of ourselves. The first living creature I nurtured and raised from kitten to crone. I’ve loved and lost other family cats in my life, but Dora was wholly mine. My responsibility. My companion. My feline extension. She taught me about patience and temperament, all things I use as I raise my actual human daughter.

An accidental tutor that cat, years of tutelage in hairballs and head hugs.

We cry for the lost because of what they leave missing in us. A brush against the leg in the morning. An after work enthusiastic meow-borne greeting. As she passed today, left me one ally shorter in the literal cold of the winter, I feared one of the lighthouses flooding light onto the darkness of my mind had been extinguished.

In the short term, the shadows close in. But I know Dora’s spirit – those years of white fur and bright eyes – have permanently rolled back the fog on my psyche, and all I need is to think of that little face to arc a beam of light across even the saddest days.

Dora’s favorite song was “It’s only a Paper Moon” (the Bing Crosby version). She especially liked it when I’d whistle it at the highest pitch possible. If I couldn’t find her – inside our out – one chirp through the chorus and she’d come running.

While I know the song by heart musically, I’d never really considered the lyrics much until today.

Love for a pet is reciprocal in so much as you believe it is. Some people might think it a superficial love, or a lesser love,

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

If you believed in me

I’ll miss you kiddo. Until the next time your purrs and my heart meet

The Mom in Grandma

My mom sits in the dwindling light of the evening, cradling my daughter in her arms. She’s sideways in an over-sized chair, head down, oblivious to the world outside the little baby below. We’ve been trying to get Ivy to go to sleep.

Softly, she sings. It’s hard to make out from my spot two rooms over, but as I focus, I pick out the unmistakable cadence of “Hush, Little Baby.” My mom sings a lot, and aloud, and I’m often amazed at the breadth of her repertoire. She’ll move seamlessly from show tunes into Disney, then slip casually into Motown or some 80s hit.

But there’s something about a lullaby. I was too young to remember her singing them to me, but here she is, singing them word for word to my daughter. For the first time in 31 years, I see my mother as she was when she was my age, when I relied on her most of all.

She continues the song, reciting verse after verse. At the next, she falters a little, unsure of the next rhyme.

Every mom has a superpower.  Given how much a baby relies on them, and how much of themselves they have to sacrifice, it’d be impossible to survive if they didn’t come equipped with some superhuman abilities. My mom’s is the ability to keep going, without blinking, in the face of absurdity and adversity. To call her strong or brave would be a disservice; she possesses innate, boundless courage and fearlessness of unforeseeable future.

She mumbles a little, but doesn’t let that stop her from moving into the next verse. I can see Ivy’s eyes fluttering; she’s fading as fast as the sunset and the light in the room. She loops back to the first verse, still sitting still, eyes still focused, powered by equal parts motherly duty and grandmotherly enamor.

My mom turns 60 today. I’ve gotten so used to her as an adult mom – the funny friend you owe your life to, but almost view as a peer – that these fleeting moments of vulnerability and flashes of her own motherhood catch me off guard. Watching her with Ivy gives me a rare window into how she was with me, and in those moments I see just how much of her there is in me, and how much of me will likely be in her.

The love of a parent cascades. It falls onto you and pools; collecting, nurturing, supporting, until it’s finally time for you to pass it on when you become a parent yourself. The love of a grandparent acts as a multiplier. Just when you thought they’d given you all the love you needed to raise your own kids, they muster more – not just for you, but for everyone around them.

Ivy is asleep now. There’s barely any light left, but I can still see the shadowy outline of my mom’s gentle rocking. She’s still looking down, still cherishing. I want to thank her, tell her how much she means and how much her love has made me the man I am today.

But I don’t want to wake the baby.

And somehow, I think she already knows.

 

December, 1919 – Chapter 8

Welcome to chapter eight of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday (or Thursday, sorry!). Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 8

Blood dripped and slipped through the rollers of the mill. William cradled his hand, wailing inconsolably, like the machine had ripped it clean off. I turned his palm upward to examine the wound, careful not cause any more undue pain. It was an ugly slash, glistening red and slick, but nothing some iodine and fresh bandages couldn’t fix.

“Oh, William, this isn’t so bad. It’s pretty superficial.” I said, half-lying, trying to keep him from panicking.

“I could have lost my hand!” He said, unsatisfied. “That thing is a death trap.” He pointed at the grist mill with his good hand, keeping the other, wrapped in the now crimson and white of his over shirt, close to his chest.

“You’ll live,” I said. “There’s some aspirin in my bag. You should probably take some before the throbbing kicks in.”

He shuffled off, so I continued the disassembly work. When in use, the mill heaved and chunked, its joints creaky and achy from old age and rust. It should have been replaced years ago, but my father had sworn the gap between the rollers was so perfect, he dare not mess with it. In defense of his eccentricity, our grists had been finer and our brew days smoother since he unlocked the magic of the ancient mill, but as I sat with a wrench and screw driver, separating sheets of sharp, worn metal, I realized just how dangerously out of service it had become.

William had made a deal to sell it to a local wheat farmer for much more than it was probably worth, and given that Nate hadn’t paid me after my little mayor-fueled disappearing show, I needed the money. William continued to whimper like pathetic puppy even though the bleeding had stopped. His quiet sobbing summed up the feeling in the brewery, embodied the sinking emotions of everyone having to pack and box up their jobs, their dreams, their lives, all so the now illegal parcel could be inspected and checked off a list by some nameless IRS lackey in the coming days.

From underneath the shoot, with catcher removed, I picked out large bits of old malt, briefly turning on the motor to clear out any smaller, hidden grains. The mill spun violently, twin rollers moving in opposite directions, inhaling soft, fresh, sweet kernels, mangling them, exposing their unprotected insides before unceremoniously dumping them onto the floor.

But without that brutal journey through and transformation at the maw of a many-toothed monster, the malt would never fulfill a greater destiny, never start the great cycle of conversion and consumption, of birth and decay, of disparate parts coming together to make a greater whole. My father always extolled yeast as the veritable mother of all brewing, but to me, a beer’s real life began at the mill.

Virginia moved silently, like a cat trying to avoid detection. The purple-black under her eye had faded to mottled yellow and brown. She’d come in early and said nothing to me, scouring the inside of the mash tun as if we were going to brew. The rhythmic shick and slide of her coarse sponge on the stainless steel played a background beat to the rest of our work, a somber melody of shuffling sacks and tired sighs. George made no appearances.

As I wrenched loose the bolt holding one of the rollers in place, Virginia passed behind me, moving towards the fermentation tanks. My nerves stood at full attention, sending a shivery salute down my spine when my nose caught the waft of her shampoo.

“Going to be hard to brew without a mill.” She said, an ethereal whisper dissipating into the cold air.

I turned to respond, but she’d already moved out of earshot. I figured after that night, after George had discovered us and threatened us, that she would have given up this crazy crusade. But apparently I was wrong. Always underestimating. Never quite finding that rarefied wavelength where Ginnie buzzed so beautifully with life. Her brown mop bobbed back and forth as she scrubbed.

William caught me staring.

“It’s OK, Jack.” He said, much calmer. “I know you’re both young, but it’s pretty easy to see what’s going on here.”

I looked at William, stoicism giving away to boyish embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” I said, trailing off.

“Because of George?” William plopped down next to me, right hand firmly squeezing left. “He’s her father, sure, but she’s allowed to make her own decisions. She’s nineteen. No longer bound to his direction, legally.”

I knew George didn’t give a damn about the law. “Thanks, William.” I said, forcing a smile.

“No one knows what’s going to happen. This new law might only last a year or two. Or it might go on forever.” He said, looking across at Virginia. “My point, and the thing you should be focused on, is that we don’t have much certainty to cling to these days. When there’s a sure thing, and you can feel the truth of it so deep in your bones, you should probably go for it. Consequences be damned.”

His words swam around my brain like an Olympian doing laps. I’d allowed my December days to fill to the brim with anger, regret, crippling self-pity, meanwhile ignoring all the potential beauty of a brand new January.

After a brief silence, he nudged my arm, and asked for help up. Once back on his feet, he hugged me, announcing he was going home to have his wife, Mary, nurse his hand. Soon after William, the last of the day workers we’d hired said their goodbyes with tipped hats, leaving the two of us alone, again.

“I’m going to tell William not to sell the mill.” I said, clanging my wrench on the metal still attached to the hopper. “I’ll find a way to make money. Maybe more hours at the paper.” The declaration met only with silence, so I walked over to the tank Ginnie had cloistered herself in like a spring robin on her nest.

“I ruined the perfect gap,” I said, waving the loose roller in front of my face, “but I guess that’s OK. I’ll set it up myself this time.”

Virginia climbed out of the fermentation tank and stood in front of me. “Good.” She said, wrapping one arm around my waist. “And I agree.”

“Agree with what?” I asked.

“William.” She whispered, resting her head against my chest. The sun hovered halfway down the horizon, throwing its rippled twin across the blue and green sprawl of the Delaware as the planet, and my heart, embraced the coming night.

To be continued…

Beer My Valentine? (2015 Edition)

Got a special gal or guy in your life who is really into beer? Need to show your love for them on this totally not manufactured love-fest holiday? Not sure how to express your undying devotion but also your appreciation for their great taste in fermented drinks?

We got your covered. With a little help from my fellow beer-romantic Bryan Roth,  I give you another round of Beery Valentines Day cards (last year’s cards can be found here):

Thank, Thanked, Thanking, Thankful

I wanted to write Thanksgiving beer post, but everyone already beat me to the “10 Beers to Pair with Turkey” idea and Stan had the satire down pat, so I figured I’d skip adding to the pile of festively uninspired listicles.

Besides, Thanksgiving never quite felt like my holiday. It felt like a day we cooked a huge bird as a meal because we were supposed to, because we didn’t have school or work, because everyone else was doing it, and it was weird to say, “oh no, we don’t do Thanksgiving” like some kind of horrible emotionless alien. As an expat you learn to adapt and blend in where you can, which means adopting the traditions and customs of your new land, even if they include bizarre things like pumpkin flavored beers and coffees. As we’d inevitably celebrate – sometimes with American friends, sometimes with our English-playing-American family unit – I came to realize that the food was just a catalyst, cranberry- and gravy-based lubrication for a mental moment of acknowledging and appreciating who you are, who you love, and who loves you, too. To give thanks is universal, a human default. Thanksgiving is just an end of November conduit for channeling the human spirit.

I leap-frogged off of Bryan (with a pass through Spin Sucks) and decided to mash my calloused writing nubs against the keyboard to express my own thanks. Much like I don’t need Valentine’s day to show my love, I don’t need Thanksgiving to give my thanks, because I actively try to do it everyday, in little ways. That said, a special spiritual power resides deep in the booming caverns of directly and purposefully saying “thank you.”

The original assignment was to write down all the things you were thankful for in 10-minutes, but since I have a mortal fear of counting down clocks from years of playing Nintendo, I’m just going to keep writing until my brain says, “OK, that looks pretty good.” I was never very good with rules, anyway.

So, in no particular order of favoritism, nor intentional slight from accidentally leaving someone out, I am thankful for:

1. My wife and best friend, Tiffany, who despite not even liking beer, tolerates and then encourages my hobby-turned-second-job because she knows how happy it makes me.
2. My dad, who somehow, in ways I still don’t understand, inspires even more now that he’s gone.
3. My mom, Denise, for having the generous foresight to give birth to me, and being an unwavering, enthusiastic cheerleader no matter what I do.
4. My sister, Becca (who completes the trifecta of “super important women in my life”) for always putting me in my place, and understanding me the way only a sibling can.
5. My cats, Pandora and Prometheus, for their dog-like loyalty, dogged commitment to laziness, and amazing ability to always make me smile.
6. Stan Hieronymous, who, through a single retweet about 2 years ago, gave me the courage to write about beer the way I want to write about beer.
7. Kristi Switzer, for taking me seriously and giving me a chance to work on projects I only would have dreamed of as a post-grad writing whelp.
8. Cathy Alter, for hard but important reviews of my work, and giving me enough emotional strength to finish a masters thesis I was tempted to give up on.
9. Candace Johnson, who always gives me advice no matter how clumsily I ask for it, and makes me a better editor, even if she doesn’t know it.
10. Justin, for being friendship immortal, the unrelenting encourager, the one I always look up to and look forward to seeing again.
11. Randy, for the memes and sanity checks.
12. Bryan, for being equal parts muse and comedian, wise and wise-cracking (plus I guess all that data is pretty good).
13. Melody, for being my writing opposite, my Hopkins-bestie, and for generally using her powers for good.
14. My boss, Becky, who will probably never read this, for her flexibility, understanding, and uncanny propensity to never stress me out.
15. Alan, for the Twitter chats, and reminding me that my voice actually matters sometimes.
16. Phil, for being my first, and longest-lasting, never-met-in-real life blogging friend.
17. Beth and Betsy, for being some of my most loyal readers, and for commenting on this blog more than anyone else.
18. Jeff Alworth, for being the kind of blogger I aspire to be, for his excellent writing, and peerless industry insight.
19. Mike, for showing me that my near future is going to be way more rewarding than I could have imagined.
20. Chuck Wendig, for countless literary kicks in the pants, hours of entertainment, and proof that dedication to your own way is a worthy and glorious pursuit.
21. The Mid-Atlantic Beer Bloggers – Scott, Ed, G-LO, Liz, Doug, Josh, Andrew, Jake,  Carlin, Sean, and Matt – who have created and fostered a community that becomes more and more important to me every day.
22. My keyboard, for its daily masochism and thankless devotion to our cause.
23. My camera for fluttery shuttering and elegant aperturing.
24. My left arm, for not giving up, even thought it totally could have (maybe should have) by now.
25. Heavy Seas Beer (namely Hugh, Caroline, and Tristan), for always having an open door, full kegs, and enough pirate in their beer to please my inner child and outer adult.
26. Jailbreak Brewing, for opening dangerously close to my home, and being delightfully helpful anytime I have a silly question.
27. Hopkins Scribes, for their artistry, talent, and writerly reciprocation.
28. The dirt in my yard, for growing things when I really needed some life in my life.
29. My neighbors, for being the family we chose.
30. My hands, for being my single most important tool.
31. My brain, for thinking my hands get too much credit.
32. My eyes, for being my doorman to the beauty of this world.
33. This blog, for giving me an outlet where all other outlets would have said no.
34. Tolkien, for giving me a light for when all other lights go out.
35. My running shoes (in whatever incarnation they’re in now) for pounding pavement to uphold the veneer of vanity.
36. My shower, for being the brainstorming supercenter of my entire existence.
37. Notes A through G, majors and minors, melodies and harmonies, and the decadent vibrations of life.
38. England, for my cultural grounding, for my family, for all that real cask ale.
39. America, for opportunity even at the worst of times, for order even in chaos, for dry-hopped and barrel-aged freedom.
40. Beer, for being a near inexhaustible font of ideas, topics, and creativity, whether in kettle or on page.

Some other friends have played along too! If you decide to join in, shoot me a link, and I’ll add you below:

• Bryan – This is Why I’m Drunk
• Doug – Baltimore Bistros and Beer
• Jake – Hipster Brewfus

I am thankful she’ll pose for me in the waft of yeast, in front of stainless, and still have that beautiful smile.

You Don’t Have to Love Brewing to Love Beer

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of teaching a group of close friends how to brew. We gathered in our host’s driveway like a gaggle of birds flocking to a piece of tossed bread, excited to gorge our brains on malty knowledge, to create and learn all in one very efficient swoop. I’ve taught classes at a corporate level before, slinging SharePoint solutions like a pro, but I’d never taught a class on how to brew. I went crazy with it. I even made a 7-page handout!

You forget, once you’ve fully ingrained yourself in a process, how many aspects of the art you take for granted. As I held up a cylinder full of golden wort to explain hydrometers, sugar density, and original gravity like these were concepts the average person should know about, it struck me how involved and complicated brewing must seem to someone who hasn’t been studying and physically doing it for nearly ten years. I did my best to explain (in less scientific terms) how water, sugar, hops, and yeast eventually become the drink we all immediately recognize, which forced me to reanalyze brewing as an activity, and it’s applicability as a hobby.

At some point, when I was explaining how to troubleshoot a stuck fermentation, and how relatively subtle changes in temperature can result in unwanted off flavors, I realized that homebrewing is a high risk, low reward venture. It requires a significant start up cost, large swaths of free time, and until you’ve done it for a while, results in pretty mediocre beer. It requires a lot of study, a lot of patience, and sometimes, a light sprinkling of luck. It’s clearly not a hobby for everyone.

A strange current undulates deep in the aquifers beneath craft beer culture, an ebb that pulls beer drinkers into production breweries, and a flow that pushes them to gaze upon rows of stainless steel tanks in jaw-dropped awe. The phenomena is unique to beer (from what I can tell); writers do not spend their time inside publishing company warehouses, admiring printers and book binding machines, while comparing and rating fonts. Foodies rarely walk into the kitchens of their favorite restaurants to grab a quick bite with the head chef while admiring his oven. In other fields, such behavior would be bizarre, possibly even ridiculed.

Part of the allure of a brewery comes from novelty; prior to the last few years, the only options you really had to see beer-making in action required generic tours through massive Bud and Miller industrial complexes. Many people who have loved beer for a long time now get to peek behind the curtain, see that the great and powerful is actually the organized and practical, demystify the processes and the people that lead to their favorite drink. General brewery openness to invite the libatious public into their work space shows just how welcoming our little community really is, but comes with an oft overlooked side effect that mars all that generous inclusivity with unintended exclusivity.

The obsession with breweries makes it seem like you have to love brewing if you already love beer. Everyone else seems enamored by the creative side, puppy-love smitten by the idea that beer is crafted by people, not just spawned in bottles and distributed to the masses. So why not you? I’ve heard several friends and colleagues announce, with much dejection, that they “just can’t get into brewing,” or “I tried homebrewing, and didn’t enjoy it,” their voices tinted with frustration and failure. There is an implication that the enjoyment of the product is inextricably tied to the enjoyment of the process, and that you cannot possibly be into one without being into the other. A subconscious malignant trend whispers mean words to the dark, suggesting that people who love to drink beer aren’t “real beer people” unless they frequent every brewery in a fifty mile radius, and homebrew every weekend.

I’m here to tell you that’s all nonsense. In a commercial context, there will always exist two subsets of people: creators and consumers. While there will inevitably be some cross over, in nearly every other modern industry, the lines are pretty cleanly drawn between the two groups. You don’t expect every voracious reader to also be a writer, or study sentence structure and grammar, do you? You’d never suggest someone who enjoys delicious food also learn how to cook every dish they enjoy, Iron Chef style, right? We appreciate the creators because without them we wouldn’t have our products to consume, but trying to culturally tie creation and consumption together will lead to a lot of unreasonable expectations, and possibly some alienating let downs when reality deviates from the prescribed popular path.

It’s OK to not want to try your hand at homebrewing, or to find the process tedious and unrewarding.

It’s OK to love beer for it’s mosaic variety and deliciousness without giving a single solitary shit about how it transformed from raw ingredients to decadent ambrosia.

It’s OK to not want to visit breweries, to not have an aesthetic opinion about stainless steel versus copper, to not really care at what temperature the grain for your favorite beer was mashed.

You can love, respect, and enjoy beer without any of that. You should still maintain a healthy respect for those who do spend their time making beer (as long as they do it well), but feel no shame in not wanting to pack up and move yourself to that side of the beerish world. While it would be pretty difficult to love brewing if you didn’t love beer, never let the culture, or any unspoken trend, suggest the opposite is true.

It’s OK, really, to love brew as a noun, but not as a verb.

“If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” ― Leo Tolstoy

 

Session #81: (The) Women In (My) Beer

I started writing this post as an essay on the gender of inanimate, gender-less things, but then realized it was a little too close to the essay I wrote a few weeks ago titled: “Brews Don’t Wear Bras, Bro.”

Instead of rehashing the same concepts, grammatically puking up those same ideas with different phrasing, I decided to detour slightly from the ethical quandaries of gender equality and bring this session entry a little closer to my everyday.

This month’s session topic (hosted by Nichole “Nitch” Richard) is supposed to be about women, beer, women in beer, beer in women, beer on women, women on beer, and whatever else we can do with those words and their related prepositions. Women “of” beer seemed pretty tempting, but my approach is to add an article and a prounoun: The women in my beer.

There are a number of women in my beer, women who have informed my pint-glass view on our ever-bubbling beer culture. The few who spring instantly to mind are those I’ve never actually met outside of a tweet or an essay, but have imprinted on my brain none the less. Jill Redding, editor-in-chief of Zymurgy magazine, whose curated glossy content I eagerly await every three months. Carla Companion (The Beer Babe) whose New England-centric beerview inspired my own local focus on Maryland beer. And a woman I’ve never met, but whose name is hard to ignore as it appears on the bottom of the copyright page in a lot of my favorite books: Kristi Switzer, Publisher for Brewers Publications.

And while these women are doing fabulous things for beer in general,  even more important to me are the women who act as the nutritious wort to my creative S. cerevisiae: my wife, my sister, my mother. These three have never doubted me, always encouraged me, and without them I’m not sure I’d be where I am today. They are my beta-readers and taste-testers, my confidants and clever-name-comer-upper-withs. Two of them don’t even drink beer, which makes their support of my chosen path even more impressive, to the point where I think they believe in the power of me, not just the power of the beer.

Tiffany – 

My wife is just Tiffany – no clever nicknames or aliases or blog-based disguises. She’s a brilliant, ever-grounded yang to my yin, the Benson to my Stabler, the one who lets me know when an idea is great, and another idea is just not so great. She’s more of a partner in creative design than anything else – a coworker, a shotgun-rider, a member of the Fellowship set out from Rivendell to brew the One Beer. She’s the one who puts up with my daily Oliverisms, only scoffing at my field research when the pile of glass recyclables starts to threaten the safety of the cats.

She doesn’t drink beer. Doesn’t even like the taste of beer. Once, after I gave her a sip of Victory Golden Monkey Tripel, she accused me of trying to poison her. Tiffany often wanders bottleshops with me when trying to find that elusive brew, grinning delightedly when she finds something new. Instead of laughing that I’m on the crawling on the ground, trying to get a good angle, she’ll stop, observe, and ponder; then suggest props and positions for photos of beer.

She more than encourages, she inspires. She more than tolerates, she promotes. She reminds me that love is tangible, is beautiful and rare, and that sometimes in life, your homebrew comes out perfect.

Becca –

My sister is the closest thing to a clone I’ll ever have, and I’m cool with that. She’s got this genetic problem where she actively likes and drinks Coors Light, but we’ve been working through it, one lager at a time, as a family. I joke with her and claim she’s not supportive of my habits when she doesn’t read a blog post within 8 minutes of it being posted, but in reality, she’s been in my corner since before I even knew I had a corner.

She knows me in a way not many do, in that way only a person who shared a near identical copy of your childhood really can. We have a shared history that spans the most formative years; decades of inside jokes, disturbingly similar mannerisms, predispositions and aversions to a lot of the same things and people. She’s the one I go to for the blunt honesty that comes from sisterly love, and I owe her more than she knows for equally feeding my ego or stepping on its head, whenever, and whichever appropriate.

Now if we can just get her to drink good beer, we can end the years of exile, and reassimilate her into the family.

Mummy –

Yea, I still call my mom “mummy.” I was born in England. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

Properly named Denise, my mom is my constant champion. I’ve written about her before, but she’s the unfailing bastion of optimism and compassion in our family, the lady who keeps us all afloat, regardless of the struggle or the emotional tax she levies on herself. She lives her life like an fully realized archetype, embodying all of that Jungian psychology of motherly duty. She seriously puts herself second to her children, even when her children chase frivolity in the form of beer and writing.

My mom formed me both literally and figuratively, and I am a product of both her womb and her mind. If I can even hold half of the love of life and family that she does in my heart, I’ll consider that a success.

These are the women in my beer, but to me, they’re just as important as the most famousests women in all beer.

Who are the women in your beer?

Beer Moms

My mom has supported pretty much everything I’ve ever done. Some good things, some bad things, all decidedly not “mom” things. I have distinct memories of her driving me to Sally Beauty supply to buy red, green, and blue hair dye during my high school punk rock phase. She encouraged my third grade choice to pick up the violin despite absolutely no prior interest in music beforehand. Her soccer sideline war cry – a British homage to Xena: Warrior Princess – rose high above the other moms cheering on the team. Whatever random hobby or sport or occult dabbling I pursued and perused, my mom was right there to say, “sure, sounds fun, what do you need?”

But as I’ve done that maturity thing, moved onto and into my own life of paychecks and mortgage and marriage, it’s been harder for my mom to stay in touch with my hobbies. She used to see me everyday, was party to my ups and downs, joys and woes, tastes and distastes as if she was a living part of my psyche. But now she only sees me through our occasional visits, my smattering of social media updates, and these blog posts. Her connection to my interests isn’t as strong as it was when I was still dependent on her for cash and car, but her passion in supporting me has not waned at all.

Last week she showed up at my house with a random six-pack, hoping, with that adorable anticipating look only a mom can give, that I’d never tried the bottles she’d journeyed to find especially for me. As I can barely keep track of my own progress in the impossibly massive offering of beer in this country, I couldn’t well expect her to know exactly what I’ve tried over the years. But she managed, probably using that inborn maternal instinct, to find 4 out of 6 that I’d never gotten my grubby little beer-mitts on.

She went out of her way, in the only way she really could, to acknowledge that she still supports what I do, even though it has long evolved past skateboarding and Operation Ivy. She wants me to know, on even the most basic level, that she’s there to help me in anyway she can. It all may sound like something expected of a mother, but my mom has this ability to make the smallest gesture – like 72 ounces of beer in a cardboard conveyor – echo and resound into the deepest corners of my soul.

A lot of us chase hobbies that aren’t exactly mainstream. Writers are often chided for “wasting time” on something that doesn’t matter, or they’ll never do anything with. Beer enthusiasts are often just equated with educated drunks. A person who writes about beer…I don’t even want to know what they say about me.

But there’s my mom, not judging, not caring, finding me new beers to try in an attempt to make me happy. Despite not knowing anything about beer, she knows everything about me.

So raise your glasses to all the beer moms, beer wives, beer brothers and sisters, beer friends. All those people who support you in whatever it is that makes you happy, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. It’s these people, those constant champions, the unwavering stars in the northern skies of our minds, that light the way when we get lost in the sprawling dark of self-doubt.

And when you’re fearing that snarling beast and your dreams feel wet and heavy, remember that someone, somewhere, is gently cradling a bottle, wondering if you’ve tried it.

For the record, I’d only tried DFH Indian Brown and HS Cutlass.

Death of a Man, Birth of a Star

My father died around 3:00 on August 12, 2013. He was 61 years old. He lived more in those six decades than most men could in twelve. If life is measured by brightness and intensity – with weak men an ember smoldering on a stick of incense and great men a blaze feeding on a forest – my father was a supernova.

As his light faded, liver and kidneys unable to hold the battlements against the three year siege from Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia, he saw things. Things that some may attribute to heightened brain activity near death, or hallucinations caused by elevated ammonia levels, or delusion caused by prolonged time in the ICU. Things that others may attribute to gods, or the God, or that shining pre-glimpse of the afterlife pointing the way to the next world.

Some of what he saw scared him. Monsters snarling over his head. Some of what he saw angered him. A mocking, morphing clock. Some of what he saw comforted him. His whole family standing next to him, holding his hands.

But the last thing he saw, that he pointed to with bright eyes, his brown shifting from my blue to the empty space behind me in the sterile sadness of the ICU, is what will twinkle in my memory forever.

He saw stars. Galaxies. A whole universe inside of a tiny room.

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. As we reassured him that he could rest and his pain was over, there came a moment where he ceased to be my father, and became only the body my father had inhabited. The energy of his body will return to the Earth, continuing the cycle of growth and decay, forever part of the beauty that blooms and incredulity of the natural world. But if energy cannot be destroyed, where did his mind go? Where is that brilliant soul so full of passion and compassion that was so much more than the sum of his skin and hair and organs?

My wife and I have discussed the “spark” – the flash in the eyes of someone alive and proud and rhapsodic – and what happens to that energy when it “leaves” a dying body. I’m sure that Heaven or Nirvana or perhaps even Valhalla are popular destinations for the purest of spirits, but I’ve never been the religious type. My love of science and tangible empiricism are directly inherited from my father.

Carl Sagan is often quoted for his nod to the idea of cosmic cohesion: “We are made of star stuff.” He meant that our basic elements – the hydrogen and oxygen and carbon – are the same as those found in the sprawling void. But I take it to mean that we’re all connected to each other in ways we might not understand, that our energies echo on in explicit physical ways, imbued in the things we touch and love, on paths that aren’t necessarily visible or measurable by what we currently know but exist in our reality all the same.

The same day he passed, and all that energy dissipated into unknown space, a new shining spot of light appeared in a previously dark area of space. Just north of the constellation Delphinus, just west of the star Altair, a nova burst into life, flaring with such intensity that it can be seen with the naked eye if you look to the northeast on a clear night.

I’d like to think that his energy was the final push this little binary system needed to blast its light across the limitless distance down into our eyes, into our minds.

I’d like to think he’s forever there, winking and smiling, part of a massive power that while impossibly distant, is right there for me to look at every night.

I’d like to think that the best people go on to be more, their energy taken in death, to be reused in birth.

(A full article about the nova can be found here)

RA 20 h 23′ 31″, Dec. +20 deg. 46

Dialysate

Stress crashes through the body like waves pounding the beach after a violent storm. Undulating periods of calm and terror. Regular and rhythmic then fluttering and panicked. Eventualities become possibilities while your stomach still lurches at the realities. Systolic and diastolic ratchet an invisible band tighter and tighter around your chest. At certain desperate moments, a family’s vitals may be less stable than the patient’s.

As you hold hands and make promises and pray to everything that will listen, you become a filter: a semipermeable membrane for emotions and ideas. In the flurry of emergency you are bombarded with quick decisions, choiceless consents, more medical jargon than a marathon of House, M.D. Many words are small enough to pass through – liver, kidneys, bleeding – but many more – critical, cardiac, infection – stick to you, wet and heavy, too grave and massive to slip through the holes of your spirit. As days pass into weeks, your filter gets clogged with the fear of the unknown and frustration of no control.

The dialysis machine does the same work. Pulling and pushing the thick red life through tiny tubes like an organ suspended in the air, a medical miracle in a whirring beige box. A cylinder stained burgundy, platelets and thick toxins forming a layer on the top, doing its best to continuously clean the blood that the kidneys cannot.

The dialysate hangs on a thin metal pole behind the machine. Dozens of bags filled with transparent liquid sag in a crude circle like a morbid bouquet of balloons. It looks as innocuous as water, like the boring stuff of sinks and showers, but it is in those heavy sacks that the secret hides.

It balances blood pH, adds vital nutrients, keeps renal failure at bay, artificially.

But it does more.

It lifts sinking souls, supports spirits, keeps hope alive, organically.

The dialysate is made of natural elements like potassium and calcium and magnesium, all the things you’d get from a bunch of bananas. Nothing fancy, no synthetic man-made magic. It creates a safe, supportive environment where the the blood can purge and purify. It gives the body a chance to find its way home. Without the dialysate the filter would fail.

So when the ultrafiltration of your body and mind sticks and binds, and the weight of a loved one’s pain overwhelms you, turn to your mother. Your sister. Your wife. Whoever it is that can hold you, cradle you, keep you strong where you alone would crash. Turn to your people to help you get all that negative gunk and gripping pain out of your filter. Wash your soul in the support and love of emotional-dialysate.

And when their filters struggle, too, when the darkness of all that unfairness blocks out the light of even the strongest optimism, remember that many are more stable than one.

The man in the bed, that brilliant, stubborn, wonderful man, the one fighting the silent battle of heart rates and blood pressures and medications, needs all of his filters – emotional and physical – to be clean.

Take every little victory and wear it like positively-charged armor. Pull out the best stuff. Throw the worst away.

You’ll be left with a net-positive.

Some freshly scrubbed optimism when all other news seems dire.

A golden glint of hope.

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
Hippocrates