Why Whine: Pressing
Hayes! Hayes McCall Ntolatse! Wake up!’
My mother. I turn over to let her know I haven’t heard a word she’s said.
‘Darling,it’s 11a.m. You need to wake up.’
I groan.
‘Come on Hayes. Don’t you have to work today?’
‘No Mother. I’m a part-time worker. I can sleep till forever and still my hours will remain at 30 per week. Let me be. Please.’
There’s silence. Maybe she has left the room.
‘You’re hung over, aren’t you?’ She asks with a hint of annoyance.
‘Mom!’
I hear her footsteps head for the door, she’s finally going to let me be. I toss and turn to return to comfort and sleep, but I cannot. My Mother has succeededwith her plan: I cannot go back to sleep.
I roll out of bed and put on the same gross grey sweatpants and college sweatshirt I’ve been wearing since I moved back home three months ago. Bleary eyed I walk into the living room where my father is in his chair, reading a very thick book. I curl up on the sofa, placing a decorative pillow over my head.
‘Did you have fun?’ My Father asks.
‘I think so, Pops,’ I groan from under fabric.
‘Good.You must get out more, girl.’
‘Hmph.’
‘What did you drink?’
‘Tanqueray and Tonic’s,’ is my muffled reply.
‘Good girl,’ my Father says pleased. ‘That is a healthy cocktail, with the quinine and berries.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Not,’ I mumble using the name his patients used when addressing him.
‘Now go get some coffee and orange juice, and look for real work.’
‘Yes,Dr. Not.’
Either it was the long-term effects of booze or my being at the end of my rope, but I agreed to marry Olly. Not the next day like he wanted, but a month from the moment we met. Somehow getting to know each other seemed an important process,specifically know each other’s surname.
Marriage.When we’re ten years old we’re all set to start planning our bouquet color scheme. By 15, we’ve got the location and order of ceremonies. At 22, we’ve got the bridesmaids list. At 28, on the dot we walk the aisle. Unless we don’t. Asa woman of a certain socio-economic bracket, being single at 28 is seeing as being a failure. Luckily, I started a long-term relationship at that time, I believed was destined for the Bridal March, making it okay with being a couple of years late. When almost exactly at 31 the relationship ended badly and I simultaneously lost my job, finding myself back at my parents front door, I was done. Done with the wedding cake, the flower arrangements and most definitely the white dress. With no swipe right for me, saying yes to an unknown Kiwi seemed like another laugh in my long line of farcical life moments of late.
Olly is the complete opposite of any man I’ve ever dated. He never went to university, hates wearing suits and can fix almost everything as evidenced by him offering to and fixing a barman’s tap on one of our early dates. Is he a hippie vagabond? Not quite since he works all the time. As a kid he’d fix and restore old motorbikes to pass the time. When it was time to go to university he used the money set aside for tuition to open a motorbike shop in Wellington. From the shop he started offering off-road tours of the North Island, then South Island, that in turn spawned two ‘mostels’ (his branding for a cross between amotel and hostel, with everything a traveller could want from a café to an open space), where his musician and artist friends started gathering. All businesses are still in operation and he’s at the early stages of kicking off an annual music festival.
They say that almost of marriages end in divorce. Makes you wonder what people are thinking when they pop the question, say ‘I do’ and smother the cake. Do they figure it’s a test round? Or is it about the fantasy? The prince charming or princess stunning who’s to make all your dreams come true, pairing perfectlywith every facet of your being? And when they don’t, you just get rid of themand find another, right?
I was born in New York City, attended the Bronx School of Science, then went onto Swarthmore. My first job out of college was as an assistant at Conde Nast.After a year I moved to the marketing department where I comfortably worked for seven years. As luck and connections would have it, I got a job as the head of marketing for a hot start-up that abruptly shut down after two years. I wouldn’t know a Phillips screwdriver from a flat head, but I can name all the indigenous and non-indigenous grapes that are grown in Italy. I dated a perfect guy who was really into wine and though he never took me to Italy (he went on his own which swiftly precipitated the break-up) I’ve been into wine since.
When the month was up, I kept to my word and married Oliver Balfour. I didn’t find anything extremely unusual or abusive about him, and we get along quite well. There were things we discovered about each other that encouraged the union. One: both of our Father’s are retired doctor’s. Like mine, his was a general practitioner but for a much smaller town outside Wellington. A native Scotsman, Olly’s Dad moved to New Zealand on a whim after meeting his Dutch-New Zealander wife when she was visiting Edinburgh on walkabout. Two: we’re both into wine, Olly to the point of making it, the reason for his being in the United States. Travelling around the globe, spending a few months in important wine making regions, he’d just spent a couple of months in Oregon and California. ‘I’m more interested in how American’s market their wine than how they make it,’ he told me.
*
I said ‘I do,’ because down on my luck and bored out of my mind, it seemed like a great adventure; something I’d never done before. I figured what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose, we’ve got things in common and the rest will come with time. Never in a million years did I expect to live the life I do now. I always believed I’d live an erudite cosmopolitan existence a few blocks from where I grew up. The New York Times, bagels at brunch, and putting 2.3 children to bed early, as a Sunday routine. Living in a country where sheep outnumber humans,in the middle of gigantic nature, with two dogs was never in my rearview. Obviously,I never went back to marketing, instead I’m a jack-of-all-trades, managing the15 million enterprises my husband comes up with. We blend well. On occasion we taste and immediately spit out a sample, carefully deciding whether it’s worth keeping around or completely changing altogether. We’re at 60/40 on those compromises (I’m working really hard on being an earlier riser and not being reluctant to go on multi-day tramping trips). All in all, I’m happy I took a risk with marriage.
Dear Readers, there will be a pause of regular words in preparation for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I will be back. Who knows, maybe I'll have some entries from Calendonia.
