BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WINE

(THIS NEWSLETTER HAS BEEN 100% WRITTEN BY A HUMAN -- ME)

(Note: The following essay will not be a rant about why the wine sky is falling, nor a treatise on biodynamics. In fact, it won’t be about wine at all. It’s about a very personal day in the life of V & Alan. Wine lovers, I hope you’ll indulge me.)

This wonderful day, incongruously, began in a room where my blood was about to be drawn for a routine lab test. It ended with V and me metaphorically intermingling our non-ancestral blood as grandson and “grandfather”.

Allow me to explain how such joy could emanate from a cold room where blood is collected in clear glass tubes and culminate in warm life-giving happiness after spending the day together with V:

I’ve known V, about to turn 12, since he was 1 ½. I came into his life when I met my soon-to-be life partner – V’s Nonna, his grandmother. Through his formative years, it became my hope to somehow become a grandfather for the first time in my long life. I’ve never had children of my own and suddenly, here comes V.

I’ve picked him up from school every Tuesday when we’d spend a few hours together, going to the bakery for some treats, to the ice cream parlor, or to the library – a place where he and I find solace. And then maybe a swim lesson.

But in all that time, V has never called me Gramps, Grandpa Alan, or Grumps. I understand this. I’m not his biological grandfather. His Nonna and I are not married, which I believe might be an inhibition for him. Naturally perhaps V instinctually knows there’s an unspoken barrier.

Being a Step-Person is not a natural progression from family to becoming a family-member. It’s usually fraught with some real hurdles – for all entities – to navigate. I think for me, my internal psychology was the impediment. Having to do with “deserve this” and “good enough”. But on this day, my uncertainies diminished and my heart softened.

But on this day, started in a bloodletting laboratory and ending in a fun, non-competitive, 18-hole miniature golf match, I think V and me became grandson and Zaide. I think he thinks so, too.

So, in that Claret (an obscure word often used for spilled blood; but appropriate here me thinks, as an excuse to get a wine reference in) room when the blood extractor turned to V and queried: “Is that your grandfather?” V, without hesitation, said “Yes”. My blood warmed even more.

With that, off V and I went into the city for lunch and golf, and ice cream – always ice cream for both of us.

We went for Chinese dim sum. We both love Chinese food. At Palette Tea House in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, which has become a place for locals along with tourists, came soup dumplings, pork dumplings with neon-green edges that were bathed in a kim chee broth, and the mot tender pea shoots with whole garlic cloves. With every bite V spread his arms and closed his eyes with ecstasy. He gesticulates like that when we go to Z&Y in Chinatown for the most amazing Peking duck.

“Now I know the difference between real Chinese food and American-Chinese,” V decreed. What blood remained in my body had just gotten a jolt of good cholesterol.

As we walked next door to get some sundaes at the Ghirardelli ice cream parlor, he again opened his arms and exclaimed, “Nothing could wipe the smile off my face. Except maybe if this building collapses in an earthquake.”

I don’t think it will. In all my years in San Francisco though, I never stepped foot in what I deemed a turista trap. But it was divine. The whipped cream, the chocolate nibs, the hot fudge usurped the ice cream, and warmed our calm hearts.

The mini-golf as V calls it, also in Ghirardelli – which I realized both of us were seeing in all its wonderful fantasy-ness really for the first time – was indoors. All the holes featured San Francisco landmarks. The Bay Bridge, the Painted Ladies, the Giants’ ballpark, presented wonderful obstacles for us golf buddies to surmount.

As we walked to the car, arms wrapped around each other, any obstructions we had harbored getting to this grand moment, were conquered.

I thanked V for this day. He replied, “No, thank you. You paid for everything and drove me here.”

In the car, on the way home, he leaned over and said in a soft voice, “It was a perfect day.” I whispered, “Perfect.”