Familiars

When I was a kid, I’d drive with my dad to the beer distributor to pick up the new half keg of “yellow beer” for the beer miester that lived in our dining room. I liked going because it was one of the few times that I’d get my dad to myself. Sometimes he’d turn up the stereo and blast opera for kicks, sometimes we’d talk.

I never liked the way the place smelled and it was always cold but I got a little Dum Dum lollipop every time so it really was a worthwhile journey. Pina Colada was always my favorite. That or Cream Soda.

Turns out, my friend Dana’s dad owned the place and there’s a pretty strong chance that, nine times out of ten, she was the one handing over the lollipop. We put it all together about eight years ago…one night after our girls fell asleep and we were drinking wine out on the porch. I think it was her first time in Vermont….our first time spending any real time together. She hadn’t spent much time out in the country yet and while we were sitting there on the porch, we heard a fox (or maybe a fisher cat) come and attack one of the chickens in my hen house. It dragged the thing, squawking and gurgling in the dark, around to the front yard and proceeded to knaw it in front of us. We could see nothing except for the predators glowing eyes in the dark and all we could hear was the crunching of bone and swallowing of chicken. We sat there holding hands in my funny little popazon chair, too freaked out to run for the indoors and too fascinated to try. It shocks me still that Dana now lives in the country herself. I was sure she’d be traumatized for life.

She came up on Monday with Amelia, her hilarious nine year old, and our buddy Kopicki to sit at the bar at the shop, drink tea and eat maple oatmeal scones. Like Ella, Amelia just got herself a pair of Heelies too… so she and Els spent the afternoon cruising Johnson’s sidewalks and eating way too much candy with the money they had stashed in their pockets. I’m sure Ella’s teachers would be very happy to know that that’s how she spent her day away from school. Very enriching. Very productive. But it beats the hell out of the all the Christopher Colombus bullshit she’d otherwise have been getting fed.

Having Dana and Kopicki sitting at my bar all day made for an incredible shift behind that counter. It was like a merging of worlds… the old and the new. Dana only offended about 25% of my customers with her crazy lack of filter between brain and mouth and Kopicki left with a fat stash of maple oatmeal scones for his friends in southern Vt.

It took about seventy three hours for the girls to come down from their sugar rush. This is not what I had in mind when I introduced a weekly allowance!