Last week our friends, Dan and Sharon, brought us a three-course meal in pots and bags. They walked into our home, not as though we met two years ago, but like we were old friends. Their thirty-one years of marriage was apparent in the kitchen: Sharon unpacked the bags and set out the appetizer: Boursin Cheese and Rosemary and Olive oil crackers. Dan set the pots on the stovetop. He scooped spoons of rice into paper bowls they carried to save me from the torment of cleanup and covered it with spicy shrimp and chicken gumbo.
Sharon pulled Saltine crackers and a half bottle of hot sauce from her Mary-Poppins bag and placed them on the counter. I smiled. Dan and Sharon are organic givers. They don’t think about how something might seem. They share what they have, even if it’s half a bottle. Hence, when Dan pulled out a half bottle of rum, it did not surprise me. I laughed. He laughed then the chorus of our laughter merged into one. He explained that he brought the rum for me when I went into surgery the week before but when he texted to visit with me earlier that week I was unavailable. He drank half the bottle with a friend.
Sharon does not drink liquor or coffee. Dan poured us both a drink. A sip of the smooth brown rum carried me back to a night I shared with them, three weeks prior. We had dropped the kids off for a youth planning event at Dan and Sharon’s and had left to celebrate another friend, Roy’s, 92nd birthday. When we returned to get the kids, the church-friends were grouped like peas in a pod in the living room. Some children played cards on the carpet, others watched TV from the couch and girls whispered tales into the next girl’s ear. The adults were outside – in the backyard.
The backyard was a barren-beauty.
With the exception of a Magnolia tree that withstood the winds of Hurricane Michael, the plants were all uprooted and the tree house they built for their children were destroyed and removed. The path to the adults was chatter and laughter, and Hubby and I found them in pods of their own. Sharon and a friend, who is battling cancer, were warming themselves before a bonfire. Dan and two friends were sitting on three wooden chairs, warming their palates with Pilar Dark Rum.
Old friends sat in the comfort of time-shared and shifted their chairs to make room for new ones. Dan poured us a drink, and I reclined into the night and breathed in the essence of humanity. Over time, people weave struggles and triumphs together; they create moments and memories, and they show up to celebrate and walk each other through grave illnesses.
I sipped my rum. Then I looked up at the dark clouds and watched as the moon sashayed across the night sky.
The night we spend under the moon drinking rum a few weeks back was perfect – And so was this one. A new cheese wined and dined my palate, and, like my new friends, I crumbled crackers on top of my Gumbo
