Corking the Bottle

Yesterday I printed A.A.'s tips to keep your holiday season sober and joyous. I thought of some ideas the people at A.A. apparently missed: Be like a lawyer and pass the bars. Wear overstuffed mittens at all parties to prevent picking up liquid temptations. If you've been working on the railroad, hide all spikes before they can be added to the punch. Use bourbon balls to make eyes in your snowman. If it's a large package of bourbon balls, make lots of snowmen. If someone gifts you a bottle of wine, buy a boat and christen it. Rudolph's nose might be red from drinking too much. Keep your own nose its natural color. If you feel tempted to take a drink, go out in the cold, where you can stay so-brrrr. If you get lost in the snow and a St. Bernard with a keg around its neck finds you, sniff contents of keg before consuming. If Grandma gets run over by a reindeer, breathalyze the reindeer and call an attorney. Keep singing the words to John Lennon's Christma...

I just spent one of my best Christmases ever. Of course I spent it sober. I am approaching eight months, my best streak without slips or relapses. I went to Grove City, Pennsylvania, along with my wife, my older daughter, and my mother-in-law. We had a family lunch with all my family and all my wife's family. We had about 20 people. The only ones missing were my younger daughter and a sister, who both live out West. This was a long trek away from my worst Christmas ever, three years ago. We planned the same family get-together seven hours from Louisville. I was looking forward to it, but not to the long trip. I relaxed the night before with enough vodka to help me sleep, and a little more so I could be semi-conscious the next morning. I don't remember a lot. I got a phone call from my wife. She was on her way to Pennsylvania without me. She said she tried to wake me up but couldn't. So she and my daughter left without me. That meant all my family saw I was missing in ...

We are getting into the time of year when Mom used to warn I better be good or Santa Claus wouldn't come bring me presents. I don't know if those warnings made me better behaved, but it sure didn't hurt. I was taking no chances. Mom wouldn't lie. Somehow, Santa was at the North Pole making a list and checking it twice, monitoring me all day, and then deciding if I had been a good boy. Something similar happened all year in regard to church. Sunday school teachers, preachers, Bible readings, and parents all warned me I had to be good if I wanted to get into heaven. It wasn't clear if that meant not stealing or murdering, or if picking up my toys made me good enough in God's eye. St. Peter was like Santa, keeping a check list to show to God when I died and appeared at the pearly gates. Could I stay "up there," or would I be sent someplace underground to burn in eternal damnation? Scary stuff, for sure. When I got older and found that Santa didn...