Cheers, Prost, Salud, Slainte

On Tuesday the 21st, I celebrated the fact I haven't had a drink in over 20 years.

Drinking was fun for years, then it stopped being fun so I stopped drinking. Clearly a bit more of a story here, but that's for another day when we're sitting around having a coffee and a long chat.

The point is the garden. My last summer of drinking I lived in D.C. in a beautiful old house in Dupont Circle. And I had a lovely garden full of roses and lavender and other plants I can't recall. My then husband was in med school and was going to New Orleans for a summer program. Would I be able to water the garden he wondered. Of course I would I assured him, I had just opened a flower shop that spring, I had a cat to feed, a business to run, why would the garden pose a problem? Cat lived, garden died, slowly, not all of it , but it looked unloved. And I felt badly and always planned to get out there and water, but it didn't happen.

By September the husband had returned, the shop was popping and I still wasn't feeling it. But I had a friend, who had a friend and calls were made and I found myself with a new batch of non drinking friends who fit in perfectly with all my former drinking buddies. My circle was wider , my eyes were brighter and my fingernails had garden dirt under them again.

Now I have lived more years not drinking that I did drinking, if that makes sense. And though my garden is suffering from a lack of rain and severe summer temps, it is clearly loved and cherished as is every other corner of my life.

So cheers to that day in September when I put down the cocktail and picked up the hose and all the other details of my life. And thank you for letting me write about this here, it's a pretty big piece of the woman you know today.