On Port

Smells, like words, can trigger a memory. The smell of the house you grew up in, or maybe your grandmothers. To me it smelled like sugar cookies and moth balls. Thanksgiving in a big house allows smells to linger. Maybe in a bedroom I smelled pumpkin pie, and downstairs sage dressing, or giblet gravy. I was hungry I thought, but maybe it was just the smell.

After dinner I like a port. Lately I start thinking about it around 4. I don't know much about port, claim no expertise. I couldn't tell you if one is 10 years old or 2. I know I've tasted it in an episcopal church in Indiana. I think I like a tawny, that really is all I know. And I don't know that I want to venture from there, because I know I like this. Why do we feel the need to add to what we already know is good. That adventurous spirit, I suppose.

But now port is some kind of comfort I share with a friend. Learning together. It covers my throat, it feels like the old pepto bismol commercial when they showed the pink stuff coating the stomach. (Pink does more than you think.) I can feel that first sip on the tip of my tongue, I can smell the deep woodsy, musky smell that I like. Then I settle in a chair and wait for the conversation. Maybe a couch, wherever it is, I wait. I don't want it to subside.