the biting of the apple

The other day I came across a bucket list of sorts that I made when I was young. It includes a column titled “Things I Want” and another column titled “Things I Don’t Want”. It was very amusing to see what my younger self thought would make me happy.

On the list of “Things I Want” are some things that I still want (a raspberry bush, a bathtub I can lay down in, a hammock), but also some things I no longer want (a garden, a car with fins, to go to midnight mass every Christmas), and some things that I managed to acquire only to get rid of when I discovered that I didn’t really want them after all (a pottery wheel, a garden, a husband).

Inexplicably, also on the list of wanted things is white hair. White hair! It is especially ironic now that I spend more than $100 every 6 weeks to cover up the white hair that I have. If only I had put “a car with a check engine light that doesn’t come on every 2 months” maybe I would have that instead.

I’m not sure when I wrote the list, but I was clearly fairly young as one of the other items on the list of things I want is to ride on a plane. Obviously this was written well before I’d ever been on a plane and still fancied air travel as a thrilling mode of transport. This was certainly long before I spent 10 hours in the middle seat in the middle row of 5 seats on my way to Madrid and long before I spent the night on the floor of the Fluminco airport in Rome waiting for a delayed flight to Amsterdam.

Sometimes, the things we think we are going to want in the future turn out to be things that don’t really make us happy. The other night I headed to LBV to try a new drink, sure that something new and creative was what I wanted. But then when I arrived I realized that what I really wanted was my old stand-by, The Biting Of The Apple. Marie and I have a rule that we cannot have the same drink twice, but this night I decided to break that rule because I knew that TBOTA would really make me happy at that moment. And it did. It’d been a while since I had it (stupid rules) but it was like coming home. It’s a fairly simple drink, apple-y and bubbly, served in a champagne glass with a lacy sugar rim. And it makes me happy. Really happy.

If I were to make another list of “Things I Want” I would put The Biting Of The Apple on that list. The Biting Of The Apple is like a bathtub I can lay down in. No matter how many years pass, I will still want it.

Lush Jen

This entry was posted on February 20th, 2010 and is filed under drinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.