I’m connecting to the power of modern milk that comes cans like the one pictured above. To suggest I’m not as daft as the rest of the world think siam — and maybe even YOU after reading that lede, I hasten to add the connection is a METAPHOR but the purpose for which both are consumed is not; it is the same. I’m not talking sexual suckling; I’m talking therapeutic. And when a fellow cannot find a therapeutic agent wrapped in soft skin, a fellow needs to settle for something wrapped in tin.
In my younger days, actually up to about the time I turned 60, beer was a party conversation lubricant, a way to leave the earth without riding a Ferris Wheel. In recent weeks, I’ve fallen into the routine of drinking a beer at the end of the day, usually accompanied by a few knives of Peter Pan Crunchy, panned using the Old Milwaukee like a stream to wash the “mud” away from the peanut chips with practiced use of tongue against the roof of the mouth and swishing the way one does when savoring a better wine. I have found that if I have a beer in the house, I can put up with a lot of what the bull of life deposits on my heart. I begin to understand why men get married, knowing that even if you don’t make wild passionate, life is a little more tolerable when you know you’ll be going to sleep with potentially available tactile affirmation that you’re a real hummin’ bean no matter what the world hurls at you.
I wonder, probably too often: who suckles this distaff half of life? What affirms the other half? A hug? Mere presence in close proximity? I understand the latter and valued it when I had it, but too often it wasn’t enough. (The rest of that story required more than a separate blog posting; it requires a frikking book!)
Whenever I CAN skip the highly overrated diversions of breakfast and lunch, I do. It’s a sign that I’m on my game, so to speak. I’m busy, doing productive things; not necessarily money making things, but accomplishing tasks gladly and finding pride in doing so, driven by the sweet smell of success instead of the stench of abject woe. I have discovered that having something to suckle at the end of the day helps. I can make it; not a big deal. I’ll have a beer as I read before I hit the hay. I haven’t “arrived,” but I’m okay.
Salude!
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
Comfort is where you find it, indeed. I, too, have been known to tilt a brew at the long sunset of another day.
Enjoy one on me!
RD