Fruitful Vines

The average vine growing an average grape varietal lives 66 years.

Moreover, it grows not naturally, but trained. By this I mean that nothing inhibits its growth. In fact, its growth is fostered. It is first planted in enriched soil and often surrounded by a milk carton to shield it from evening cold and allow it to grow straight. It is watered and fertilized and assured good health.

Once it reaches a certain height, the vine is attached to a trellis. That trellis will train the vine upward. Here, it can better receive sun, water and life. Once it grows again it will be bifurcated by a caring farmer who will take one part of the vine and trellis it to the left, and the other trellised to to the right. The grapes grow in these distinct arms to bear gads of fruit such that nearly each section can produce enough fruit to provide one bottle of wine.

Without training, the vine would not produce nearly enough. It could not receive sun or water or be harvested correctly. It may, in fact, just be for the birds. And no one wants an expensive and highly potentate vine to be bird food.

And so it goes when your habits are not received in the silence of being solo but to an audience of one that may or may not applaud what you do whether you do or not.

Leaving shoes on the mat no longer is without consequence, leaving work out clothes to hang while they dry conveniently in a guest room, unfettered bourbon consumption, the NFL Network and the production and performance of household chores journey from the province of knee jerk inconsequential dictatorship to something akin to a settlement negotiation. Such is the trellis.

If I can watch games today, you can watch the Bachelor tomorrow; if I make dinner, you can clean up; if I take Duncan out, you can take him tomorrow. It is not a burden mind you, just the dance of two very good friends that also happen to be lovers and who (by the way) have dedicated their lives to one another.

When two people become one, each become each other's growers. They nourish, they shield, they watch and they hope. That can be harsh when it is cold and good when it is warm. The fog can roll in at night or during the day, no one can know. But, the astute wine lover knows that the unpredictable combination of warm and cold produces the best grapes as they climb the trellis.

But much like each vine grows to produce more trained than they ever otherwise would, so do the marrieds. They grow, they get harvested, they lay dormant, and they grow again to repeat a cycle that is more productive than had they been allowed to ever grow alone without training and without harvesting.

I concede that I have become lovingly trained. Not in a puppy way, but in a way that refreshingly reminds me that it is not just me anymore, it is much more. And as I enjoy the growth, the harvest and the dormancy (it is winter), I wait and I wonder how much I will produce knowing that it will be ever so much more than I would have had I just remained uninterrupted on a football Sunday.

As I watch the Golden Globes.