Today was our shopping day, which I spend strolling past aisle after aisle of items. These items all seem to have one thing in common; they have no soul. The wine bottles differ in slightly different shapes of the bottles, different labels, and different prices. I suppose the contents differ too, but I am no judge of that.
Later on in the day, we got a call from our neighbors, whose sour cherry tree has had a stellar year. They had picked all the cherries they needed from the branches they could reach with their ladder, and wondered if we would like to pick the rest. We loaded up our 8′ stepladder and headed over.
While I climbed the ladder and picked, the ladies held my ladder and chatted, and Franco found an old board with a rusty nail in it. After about a half hour of pleasant labor, we had 3 nice plastic containers of very nice cherries. Starting tomorrow morning, I plan to make a batch of sour cherry wine from some of them.
And that brings me to the point. This wine will have soul, regardless of how it comes out. There is a story associated with our picking of the fruit, our neighbors’ generosity in allowing us to, the dog’s stick with the rusty nail, and the time I dropped an almost full bucket out of the tree.
I’m beginning to understand that we are a family first, but are also members of a community. And stories are what bind us as a community. Memorable things happen when we get together, get remembered, told, and cherished. And it helps to have a bottle of wine to share while the stories are told.