A Perfect Day, Except for the Terrors of Inside Straights

It was a perfect day, sunny and mild and pleasant and full of my favorite things. The Ducks steamrolled Utah State 66-24 with 688 yards of total offense, a school record. I had a date with Marie, a lovely afternoon together followed by dinner at Chang's Mongolian. Oh, to see that girl again in just a tiny pair of blue underwear, then to hold her while she slept, rubbing her temples and shoulders and soothing away her cares and mine, there are neither songs or words or poems rich enough to hold an afternoon that heavenly. I adore that woman. You probably have figured that out by now. We had a terrific meal and a ride home under the moonlight with the top down in the Vista Cruiser, talking about everything from politics to our grandbabies and the little two bedroom condo we'll buy when better days arrive. I'm thinking of George and Lenny, talking as they walk along rivers and work the fields, "Tell me how it's gonna be, George, tell me how it's gonna be." How do we make it that way? I'm anxious to know. I want to hold the future in my hands like a baby rabbit and I hope I don't squeeze too hard. In the beginning the blog was occasionally lyrical and usually ambitious, and sometimes now I'm afraid I just mail it in between poker games--I'm embarrassed that I don't deliver enough for the subscription you've paid of your precious time and interest, a gift as ripe as a basket of farm-picked raspberries, remarkable and bright.

Marie had to drive home after dinner; she has to work in the morning at five, driving straight home and going straight to bed she wouldn't sleep seven hours. They are not much of a job but they are all the jobs we've got, and I suppose we're lucky to have those: I've often said I'm just one bad call from being fired. A lot of the time we have to choose between getting to bed or dragging ourselves through the next day. It's why a lot of us dream of winning Powerball--we know it isn't rational or likely, particularly when I rarely buy a ticket, but we all have this secret half-formulated wish of escaping the rat race to some finer and more hopeful and self-directed life. In the meantime we just set the alarm and put on the apron and mind the store.

Earlier today I promised Doug I'd give him a call. Conroy-Debrie were playing tonight at A Taste of Wine, a congenial, bright and open wine bar in Tualatin. "Would you like to meet for a glass of wine there or are you too busy?" I asked, grateful that T-mobile hadn't yet dropped the call. Doug chuckled his deep-throated chuckle. "Gretchen and I are on our way there now," he said. I told him I'd see them there in 40 minutes. I remember the line from "Dead Poets Society": Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

Doug and I visited A Taste of Wine earlier this summer and had a wonderful time. The staff is cordial and knowledgeable and wines are reasonably priced and accessible, a truly great place to gather with friends and converse and make discoveries. They make a real effort to demystify the wine experience and allow you to enjoy it free of pretense or pressure. Conroy-Debrie is Ann and Dub Debrie and Tony Conroy, and Marie and have gone to see them many times, bringing Gretchen and Doug out for a New Year's Eve party at the old Sweetbriar Inn. Marvelous, marvelous music, tight harmonies, sharp instrumentation, soulful and witty and playful, with an amazing range of material, everything from "Pinball Wizard" to Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line." Every song delivered with inventiveness and devotion. All art aspires to the quality of music, and theirs is a high standard indeed.

Doug and Gretchen and I sipped our wine and enjoyed the music, just chatting and catching up, about an amazing dinner they'd had at a new restaurant, where their son Tucker is the assistant pastry chef, grandbabies and the fortunes of our football teams, my date with Marie. Gretchen has a new passion, hormone therapy. She visited a doctor from the Laurelhurst neighborhood, Kathryn Retzler, who prescribes treatments design to restore hormonal balance. It seems that hormonal imbalances inform a lot of life's ills, particularly as we age, and along with the stresses of modern life can rob us of the joy and vitality that ought to be our birthright. Bags under the eyes and hair loss and water retention are simply outward signs of much larger and more serious problems which hormone therapy can address. I don't completely understand the science, but I can say that Doug and Gretchen looked radiant and happy together, and that is testament enough for me.

Afterward we drove up to their place and had dark chocolate and raspberries and organic grapes. Gretchen had us squeeze some lime juice on the raspberries and it gave them a surprising extra kick. We talked a while more and laughed a little longer, until it grew late and I wanted to leave them some time to enjoy their new found health. Gretchen told the story of when she decided Doug was the guy. It was on a trip to Kahneeta at the end of their senior year. "In my family there was always a lot of anger and bickering, but he was just so totally calm," she explained. A group of friends had decided to hop in the Chevy Malibu and make the drive to someplace warm, the hot springs where they could enjoy some swimming and time away from the greyness that descends on Oregon sometimes. Things didn't go as planned, as things often do. "It was the trip where everything went wrong," Gretchen said. On the way they ran into an unexpected late snowfall. "All of us were in tee shirts and shorts, freezing, trying to put on tire chains." A few miles further up the road and one of the chains breaks loose and wraps itself around the axle. Everybody out of the car, their fingers freezing, struggling to work the chains loose and hook them up again around the tire. A little further and they came to a bad wreck and a long delay. "I learned later that someone died in it. We sat there for what seemed like hours." They'd come to the traffic jam at a place where the road was banked steeply to one side, and the Malibu slid sideways toward a snowbank, and when it slid nearly off the road, the car behind dumbly pulled forward, and slid sideways into the Malibu, the two cars stuck together and the entire side of the Malibu dented and scratched. Everyone out of the car again, to try and push the cars apart, with finally some other folks among the nearby stranded motorists jumping out to help. "Then we finally got to Kahneeta and it was raining, and we had to just turn around and go back. Through all of this I was waiting for the anger and the shouting, because that was what I was used to, but it never came. He was just so calm and understanding, and that's when I knew. I later learned Doug does have a temper, but I was just amazed at how he handled everything that day."

She made him work for it though. Later on that summer she tried to break up with him, explaining she was going away to college in the fall and wanted to be free to date other people. Doug considered this for a long moment and told her he wouldn't be comfortable with that. "He stayed away for four days, and then finally he came over and told me he'd agree to it. I went away to school that fall and sometimes he'd come down to see me on weekends, and sometimes I'd tell him not to come down until Saturday because I had a date on Friday night."

Through it all Doug stuck with it, but it was hard sometimes. Valentines Day of that year he came down to see her and when he got to her dorm room there were two bouquets of flowers on her desk, from two of her other admirers. "So you just wore her down," I teased. "Yep. I outlasted them all," Doug said.

Apparently he did. This month is their 33rd wedding anniversary, and they have six children and two beautiful grandbabies and a paid-for house to show for it. I left them a few hours ago, and I suspect now they are sleeping soundly, hormonal imbalances adjusted, safe in one another's embraces. Would that the whole world would find a love as rich and rewarding as that.

That was my perfect day. Poker is a disaster tonight, though, a living embodiment of the cliche "lucky in cards, unlucky in love." Extremely lucky to have met the one girl I will never stop loving or wanting, I lose with pocket jacks to a running inside straight, three of a kind to an inside straight, with AQ to 86 offsuit. A poker nightmare, relentless. It doesn't matter what I play or what they play, what follows is what they'd request on dial-a-poker-prayer. I've lost about eight dollars on a night I'd like to make 1500 and a win the girl of my dreams, having been lucky enough to find her at 53.

I'll just have to win her in another way.