Even after all this time, particularly around the holidays, I can still sense the occasional awkwardness when people discover I don't drink. I can see it in their eyes as they start to discuss with me the wine list at a restaurant, only to stop, or when they laugh while relating a boozy escapade and then cut the story short.
I understand their discomfort. They believe this: Maura cannot drink. The statement is correct, but, 25 years after the December night when I last had one too many, the emphasis is all wrong.
It's true that when anyone decides to quit, he or she starts by saying, "I cannot drink." But year after sober year, the statement changes to a living affirmation: I can not drink. There's no deprivation involved, and certainly no sympathy necessary.
Indeed, the personal growth needed for sobriety, as opposed to the white-knuckled and resentful abstention of alcohol, is neither negative nor the equivalent of a closed door. Instead, it is a series of yeses.
Yes to savoring a sunset without reaching for anything to enhance its beauty.
Yes to lifting raising a glass of sparkling cider during the wedding toast — or when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve.
Yes to greeting the arrival of a baby or celebrating a graduation without needing or even wanting anything more to accompany unvarnished joy.
It sounds Pollyannaish, I suppose, to those who haven't lived it, but it is possible to enjoy not drinking as much as drinking. Of course, that takes a certain maturity, a quality sorely lacking in media portrayal of alcohol. Instead, that portrayal has a comic-strip feel, as a recent article in The New York Times pointed out; on television, alcohol is either a rollicking good time or "a life destroying scourge." Neither deals with either the complexities or contradictions involved.
What rarely is shown is the simple joy of sobriety. Yet it is as real and as rich as all the well-publicized extremes.
Few can quit entirely alone, and recovery is famous for relying upon support of others in words and meetings. But overlooked is the silent power of personal example. While still a committed drinker, I became friends with an accomplished journalist. Joanna had it all: a big job at a major daily, a Pulitzer prize and, to my surprise, a refusal to imbibe. "I like life to move at its own pace," is the most she would say, smiling, and I envied her sense of balance. Her example, more powerful than words, helped me stop later on. A year after I stopped, my sister Ellen did, too.
Not drinking has provided unexpected humor, like the time I asked someone to drink for me. At a whiskey taste at Ireland's Shannon Airport, I asked a stranger to sample and evaluate some morning shots so I could buy a bottle for my husband. He gallantly agreed.
Sobriety has given me a season of gratitude. It has made me a better wife, mother and writer. And, yes, it entails doing without sometimes. Fine wines at restaurants never held much attraction, and now I don't have to pay for them. I miss the occasional cold beer, but I am grateful in the knowledge I need never play beer pong, a pointless amusement not yet invented when I finished my last brew. And the airport whiskey? I have to admit, when the bottles were opened and I got a whiff of that still-familiar scent, I salivated
It's OK. By now, I, too, like life to move at its own pace.
Warren Zevon, when he knew he was dying from terminal lung cancer, was asked by David Letterman, if there was anything that he understood now, facing his own mortality, that he didn't know before. Warren replied, "Just how much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich."
"Enjoy Every Sandwich" is the title of a a tribute album by many famous musicians (Dylan, Springsteen, Don Henley, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, among others) released after Warren's death; it includes two unreleased Zevon songs: "The Wind" sung by Billy Bob Thornton and "Studebaker" sung by Warren's son, Jordan Zevon and "Werewolves Of London" by Adam Sandler.
Listen to my favorite song by Warren: "Keep Me In Your Heart". It reminds me of the e. e. cummings poem "I carry your heart with me".
e.e. cummings - i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
Please read this article from Tim Giago, an Oglala Sioux, who is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association and is also the publisher of the Native Sun News.
On clear nights when winter winds whistle through the canyons around Wounded Knee Creek, the Lakota elders say it is so cold that you can hear the twigs snapping in the frigid air. They called this time of the year "The Moon of the Popping Trees." It was on such a winter morning on Dec. 29, 1890, that the crack of a single rifle brought a day of infamy that still lives in the hearts and minds of the Lakota people.
After the rifle spoke, there was a pause, and then the rifles and Hotchkiss guns of the Seventh Cavalry opened up on the men, women and children camped at Wounded Knee. What followed was chaos and madness. The thirst for the blood of the Lakota took away all common sense from the soldiers.
The unarmed Lakota fought back with bare hands. The warriors shouted to their wives, their elders and their children, "run for cover" -- Iynkapo! Iyankapo!
Elderly men and women, unable to fight back, stood defiantly and sang their death songs before falling to the hail of bullets. The number of Lakota people murdered that day is still unknown. The mass grave at Wounded Knee holds the bodies of 150. Many other victims died from their wounds and from exposure over the next several days.
The Lakota people say that only 50 people out of the original 350 followers of Sitanka (Big Foot) survived the massacre.
Five days after the slaughter of the innocents, an editorial in the Aberdeen (S.D.) Saturday Pioneer reflected the popular opinion of the wasicu (white people) of that day. It read, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."
Ten years after he wrote that editorial calling for genocide against the Lakota people, L. Frank Baum wrote "The Wizard of Oz."
The federal government tried to erase the memory of Wounded Knee. The village that sprang up on the site of the massacre was named Brennan after a Bureau of Indian Affairs official. But the Lakota people never forgot. They still called it Wounded Knee. In the 1920s, Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve built the Wounded Knee Trading Post there to serve the Lakota people.
My father, Tim Giago Sr., worked as a clerk and butcher for the Gildersleeves in the 1930s, and we lived in one of the cabins at Wounded Knee that were later destroyed in the American Indian Movement occupation in 1973.
As a small boy, I recall summer evenings when the Lakota families sat outdoors and spoke in reverent voices about that terrible day in 1890.
Much of what they said was written down by a young man named Hoksila Waste (pronounced Hokesheela Washtay) or Good Boy. His Christian name was Sid Byrd, and he was a member of the Santee Sioux Tribe, a tribe that had been relocated and scattered around the state after the so-called Indian uprising in Minnesota.
Byrd wrote that it was the white man's fear of the spiritual revival going on amongst the Lakota in the form of the Ghost Dance that led to the assassination of Sitting Bull on Dec. 14, 1890, just two weeks before the massacre. Fearing further attacks, Sitanka (Big Foot), and his band, a group that performed the very last Ghost Dance, went on a five-day march in order to reach the protection of Chief Red Cloud at the Pine Ridge Agency. The weary band was overtaken and captured at Wounded Knee Creek (Canke Opi Wahkpala).
Byrd believed, as do all Lakota people, that Big Foot died as a martyr for embracing the Ghost Dance "as freely as other men embraced their religion."
Byrd wrote in his Lakota version of what happened that day, "Later, some of the bodies would be found four to five miles from the scene of the slaughter. Soldiers would whoop as they spotted women and children fleeing into the woods and chase them on horseback. They made sport of it. I heard from the elders that the soldiers shouted 'Remember the Little Big Horn.'"
On the 100th anniversary of that infamous day, Birgil Kills Straight, Alex White Plume and Jim Garrett organized a ride that followed the exact trail taken by Big Foot and his band. That ride has taken place every year since Dec. 29, 1990. At the end of the ride they hold a ceremony called "wiping away the tears" that calls for peace and forgiveness. This year they will take that ride again, 120 years after the massacre.
Arvol Looking Horse, the Keeper of the Sacred Pipe of the Lakota, says a prayer every year on the hallowed grounds at Wounded Knee. He prays that America will someday apologize to the Lakota for the terrible deeds of the Seventh Cavalry, and that the 23 soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor for the slaughter of the innocents, will have those medals revoked. He also prays for peace and unity.
When thinking about choosing the date for my own wedding, I chose June 19 because that is the date of my brother Ken and his wife Betty's wedding. I told my then fiancee, "They make me know that life-long love is possible." Gerald commented, "And they accepted me right from the beginning."
Looking back, it is now hard to believe that Gerald wasn't immediately accepted by my whole family, as he is held in such esteem now. Of course, WHO would have been GOOD ENOUGH for me then? I was very touched when one of MY nephews recently told me how much Gerald had influenced his life.
As we shared the same wedding anniversary, Ken and Betty and Gerald and I would celebrate our anniversaries together and we went to many memorable places such as The Maramor, The King Cole, Annarino's, and the The Kenley Players, but my favorite was when we saw Ed Ames in the musical "I Do! I Do" at the Country Dinner Playhouse. The song "My Cup Runneth Over" comes from that show.
When I was a kid I actually went OUTSIDE and played in the snow, but now I am perplexed as to WHY because there was always television to watch and books to read. It was probably just to be with my brothers and their derring-do. They built snow forts and had snowball fights, lobbing the snowballs over the fort walls. The snow would always drift in the driveway and they would dig a tunnel to the road! We played "Fox and The Geese", made snow angels and ate snow cones!
The brothers built snow-women and all of them would have ridiculously large bosoms. They would put pieces of coal to represent nipples and a mop head to represent hair! I wish I had pictures of them!
Mother refused to let the boys use any of her "brassieres" (as she called them), but one day we saw a red brassiere adorning a snow-woman! My mother rushed out to snatch the bra from the snow-woman! I didn't even know she owned a red bra!
Later on, after seeing the red bra, we noticed the "Frederick's Of Hollywood" catalogs and brown packages marked C.O.D. arriving. Those catalogs rapidly disappeared and yesterday my brother laughingly told me that the catalogs were all lovingly maintained at their fort in the woods!
When I was grown up and my mother came to live with me, she was unpacking her "unmentionables" to put in the dresser drawer. There were some beautiful pieces of lingerie. She said, wistfully, "I don't know why your daddy bought all this stuff; he hardly got to see me wear any of it!" The items are still in the drawer, but it taught me a lesson: I wear all of my "unmentionables"!
