PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

When I was a young boy my aunt Norma would sometimes take care of me. I would stay down at her house with her and she'd teach me different things, refined things, things that probably a six-year-old wouldn't easily know. She was this single 40-year-old architect who took pleasure from the simple joys in life, when you'd go to her place, you'd find it easily as it was the only house in the street with modernist Windows and subtle colors. As I grew older, she started teaching me a little bit about more grown up stuff, she knew I was a child with an overdeveloped maturity level, so she decided it might be time for me to learn about wine, about how you taste wine, about how you interpret its different characteristics. Sooner or later she found out that I had this huge interest on the art of making and trying wine so she started teaching me more about different types of wine and I started learning every detail, remembering the irregularities of a Pinot noir or the grip of a Cabernet Sauvignon like they were old friends whose favorite colors I was learning. I remember still sitting at her mahogany dining room table, listening, to Billie Holiday with a cup of white wine beside me. Sometimes it was a little bit bitter like Ms. Holiday's voice when we decided to open up a red one and listen to "Strange Fruit", sometimes a little sweeter when we had some rosé to the tune of " 'Tain't Nobody's Biz'ness". In the end, all I can tell you is that all those moments where in some way unforgettable for me. Sooner or later, for reasons far beyond me, I stopped seeing aunt Norma, but as a reminder of her teachings, she left me this collection she had of all the wine corks that belonged to all the bottles she had opened in her life. Maybe it's not a big memory and maybe she wasn't someone that I fully appreciate, no one's perfect and god knows she wasn't, but what I can tell you is that there's something about these wine corks that makes me want to be six years old, listening to Billie Holiday at that mahogany table, having the best Merlot you've ever tasted.