Drinking Wine Out of the Bottle

I dug out our old wine glasses this weekend to use for a picnic style communion at church. As I was washing the dust off of them, I reminisced about the days when mom and I regularly enjoyed sharing a bottle (or box) of wine. Although I wanted to be a red wine drinker...I always liked a lighter, sweet wine best. Mom liked them all. (She also was big on margaritas in the summertime and a good scotch any time.)
One of the perks of being the opening waitress at the Oyster Bar, was the winery reps always came by after the lunch rush to have the bosses sample their products. Because my shift was over at that time...I often got to join them. One particular winter afternoon, the Bridgeview rep was there. He had brought several different bottles along...one of them was a beautiful cobalt blue bottle...Blue Moon Riesling. The bosses brought out a plate of cheese, crackers and chocolates and they uncorked the bottles one by one. After we had tried sips of each, we chose which ones we thought would sell well at the restaurant. Once the rep left, my bosses offered me the opened Riesling to take home with me. It was by far my favorite. We corked the bottle and stuck it in a brown paper bag. I put it in the trunk of my car and headed for home.
On the way home I remembered the time some friends of ours gave us a bottle of Oak Knoll Riesling, which I opened while I was making dinner. I poured a glass for me and one for mom. We agreed it was quite tasty. Mom finished hers first and poured herself another one saying,
"I think I'll have a glass while I take a quick bath before dinner." I don't know what the heck I was making, but she was out of the tub before it was done and asked me to pour her another glass to have with dinner. I did. That was four glasses. Four glasses equals one bottle. We enjoyed our dinner and mom got up to get another glass of wine. "How many glasses of wine did you have?" she yelled from the kitchen. "This bottle's empty!" I just shook my head.
Once I got home...I decided to leave the bottle of wine in the trunk of my car. I knew...it would be gone the moment I took it in the house. Each afternoon, after I parked in our driveway, I would open the trunk and take a few swigs off that bottle of wine...still wrapped in the paper bag. It was the best wine I ever drank. Maybe it was because I was drinking right out of the bottle. Maybe it was the brown paper wrapper. Maybe it was because I thought I was being so sneaky. I don't know. Thought...was a key word. You see...we share our driveway with the neighbors. One driveway between the two houses. Two garages at the end of the driveway. Our garage had too much stuff in it for me to park inside...so I was always parked just outside the door. One afternoon as I was re-corking the bottle, I looked up and saw our neighbor watching me from her kitchen window. I smiled and waved...and wondered to myself how many days I didn't see her up there as I enjoyed my secret pleasure. I thought that it probably didn't look very good...me taking a few drinks off a bottle wrapped in a brown bag (like the men I stepped over on my way to work in the morning) each afternoon before I went in our house. My only consolation was that at least I wasn't drinking and then driving off. I decided to surrender. Bring the bottle in the house knowing full well that mom would finish it off in no time. And that's exactly what happened. I think it sat in the fridge all of twenty minutes...until M*A*S*H ended and mom got up to look for a snack.