Alfred came in from the garden with an empty bottle of
Cockburn 1994 Vintage Port in one hand and a crystal goblet in the other. Truth
be told, he appeared pretty satisfied with himself.
Mother
looked up from her packing and said, “Oh, I was looking for that glass. I
wondered where was.” She took the goblet, rinsed it out, dried it, wrapped it carefully
in packing paper and inserted it lovingly into one of the little compartments
of the box she was packing on the kitchen table.
She
asked, “What were you doing in the garden with a bottle of vintage port and a
goblet?”
“Mother,”
said Alfred, “I was offering an libation to God in thanksgiving for all His
blessings here in our home.”
“A
libation, Alfred?” said Mother, puzzled.
“So
many changes, Mother, so many changes, so many people we have known, so many
good-byes.”
“Yes,
rather, Alfred,” said Mother. It all reminds me of Bilbo’s last speech at his
birthday party when he turned eleventy-one.
Alfred
laughed, “Yes, indeed, Mother, very clever. You mean when Bilbo said, “”First of all…I am immensely fond of you all,
and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent
and admirable hobbits…I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like;
and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”[i] It
has been over all, mostly good, Mother, despite people like Ima Hatchett, Moana
Crutchley and Harry Prudhomme! That is why I was out in the garden offering a libation
to our God and Father.”
“What
gave me the idea, Mother was a verse in the Book of Numbers that says, “For the
drink offering you shall offer a third of a hin of wine, a pleasing aroma to
the LORD” [Numbers 15:7], and I thought why not. That Cockburn 1994 Vintage
Port won’t travel very well, and it may take weeks for it to settle after we
move. So I took the bottle out to the garden to make a libation to the Lord in
a place that has always given me such pleasure.”
“But,
why the goblet, Alfred?” asked Mother.
“Well,
Mother,” said Alfred, “the Cockburn 1994 is after all a very fine vintage port,
so I brought a crystal goblet with me. Oh, Mother, you know! One glass for me,
and the rest of the bottle I poured out before the Lord. It would have been a
shame not to have tasted it after saving it for so long.”
“Saying
good-bye is such an awkward thing, Alfred,” said Mother, ‘so many mixed
emotions. I swear, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I am particularly
fond of Grace and Horace Whittington.
I’m really going to miss them, and months ago I would never have thought that I
was going to miss our Bible Study group.”
“Ah,
but Mother,” said Alfred, “Just think of the adventure ahead of us. Jeremy and
Winnifred are about to have a baby, and we are about to see our grandchild grow
up. Not only that we are moving back to the area where we first met and fell in
love. Imagine, we have a contract on a home on Beacon Hill and there is so much
to do in Boston. Why, The Boston Museum
of Fine Arts has a current exhibition on Jamie Wyeth that examines his
imaginative approach to realism over the course of six decades.”
“Alfred,”
said Mother. “I’m excited to go, but at the same time, I’m sad to leave.”
“I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for
welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” [Jeremiah 29:11].
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