Blue Moon & Red Wine
August 9, 2010
An incredibly thin drink of water just stepped into the Norterra Barnes & Noble. Platform heels, a simple dress draped down to a foot and one-half above her lovely knees. She looked smoldering hot. Probably because she just stepped in from 103F/39C degree 9pm heat of far north Phoenix, Arizona. Was she an angel?
I was just thinking in the shower this evening about how after almost 7 years of divorce the ex-Mrs.Dr.Malamud is looking not like my bride of 1977 but like any number of us, overweight, aging and fading Baby Boomers.
Aisle I hoped to find her in
The other night I could not resist the call of the Blue Moon beer at the store, so I bought a schooner-sized 22-ounce bottle and when I finished it, I also finished all the red wine in the house. I slept poorly and almost until work’s start time and feeling horrible most of the day.
I realized I had been doing this same thing for months, for years, which told me that I had a real problem with alcohol if I’d been subjecting my life to that level of abuse.
Many, many Americans live their entire lives that way, stumbling from drunk to drunk with their work, family and entire life somehow fitted in where they will. Witness the extreme number of ‘entertainment’ venues based around the consumption of alcohol.
But then again without a doubt it is a useful ingredient of our lives, allowing us to say what we might not otherwise, do (within reason) what we might not otherwise, bond in ways we might not otherwise.
But for Dr. Malamud alcohol is more like a prescription drug, only with me in charge of the pharmacy.
You know I never was handsome, I never had that 14-25 year old instant when I was as good looking as I’ll get. Struck down by pustular acne—thank God my otherwise emotionally absent father noticed and could afford the best dermatologist and treatments.
But it was too late before it was begun for I was left with a moon-scaped countenance and a teen psyche scarred by too many public instances of skin-peeling off from a dry-ice and alcohol treatment at the doctors, or a pustule bursting in the middle of geometry class with a stream of blood and puss mixing with the tears running down my pocked cheeks.
One technique we learn, those of us searching for answers to things such as the above is to become your own parent, to step back and look at yourself during that period and give yourself a hug, give yourself the love that any balanced parent would feel moved to emote.
Something I often find myself doing is looking at my clients and seeing them as that seven year old child and trying to imagine what happened to make them the way they are today.
