Wine bottle

Dear Sarah - Day 289 of our daily drawing exchange

Hi Sarah -

Today we took our first real rest day and thoroughly enjoyed some ocean swimming and beach time, roaming around the village, lunch overlooking the water, picking up a few groceries and doing a load of laundry. Because of our slow start this morning, I was able to get quite a bit done on my Rome project for school and, in the course of writing and then taking a look at the drawings I’m hoping to include, discovered some unexpected threads, which I’m hoping to weave together into something submittable.

One of the themes that has percolated to the top is how sharing food can be a way to establish (and later assist with recalling) memories of those with whom said meals were shared.

I was writing about this and remembered a wine bottle that Dad had carefully saved after he and I shared a simple meal (bread, cheese, tomatoes, cheap red wine) at the side of the road in the south of France. We had stopped at a farm-stand where they were selling local wine, cheese and olives and we borrowed their corkscrew in order to break into the bottle. We were both lightweight drinkers, so it took a few days to finish it, and when it was empty, Dad wrapped the bottle and brought it home, where it sat on a shelf in his studio until I snapped a photo of it many years later, after he passed away.

It was a good bottle - rather than having a paper label, the design was etched into the glass - and for both of us, seeing the bottle always brought back that memory of the tasty meal eaten late one afternoon beside a field of sunflowers.

I had forgotten both the bottle (and the photo thereof) until I was working on the paper and was a bit surprised at how easy it was to find in my gazillion photos (I back them all up in google photos and the search feature - I just typed in ‘wine bottle’ - is pretty good).

I have fond memories of sharing pastries with you on Dani’s boat - we must do that again as soon as possible (not necessarily pastries, and not necessarily on a boat). We can draw what we eat and by doing so, create layers of neural pathways that will make such shared pleasures impossible to forget.

Nikki

Hi Nikki,

It sounds as if you had a wonderful rest day. I love the wine bottle drawing and the story about your dad. I agree that often what makes a meal memorable is the people we share it with. A meal that has stayed with me for over 50 years is pictured below. Drawn from memory. It was a glorious summer day and my boyfriend and I had been invited to lunch at the home of one of his co-workers, an older (he was probably 50 lol!) Italian mechanic who lived in a small house overlooking his huge garden. It was the only time I ever met him or his wife (not Italian). She had baked a wonderfully dense yet soft white bread, which she sliced thick and spread with a thin layer of her homemade basil pesto. He went out into the garden and came back with a couple of massive beefsteak tomatoes, which he sliced up and put on the bread and dusted with salt and fresh-ground pepper. We sat on the deck in the sunshine, eating tomatoes still warm from the sun, talking, laughing, and savouring the taste of summer. I think we must have left Victoria soon afterwards, to go and live on our boat. Perhaps that was why we never saw that lovely couple again. I have never tasted a better tomato.

I look forward to sharing a meal (or some half-price pastries) with you again.

XO S

S