Drinking Diaries

THE PHOTO SITS ON THE desk in my office. In it, the sky is gray with clouds, hovering over the sandy banks of the Loire River, where my mother and I sit on a small blanket. She’s wearing a transparent white blouse with a long strand of pearls, and I’m dressed in a sleeveless navy top with patchwork jeans. Our picnic spread consists of a baguette, fresh peaches, some smelly cheese I won’t touch, and some dark chocolate I will. There’s a bottle of red wine for her, a jus d’orange for me. I am seven years old in the photo—snapped by a local fisherman—during a week in which my mother guided me through Paris, her native city, and on a side jaunt to the châteaux of France’s Loire Valley.

Fast-forward thirteen years, and my mom and I are again ambling through the French countryside. This time I’m twenty. The tall, bright sunflowers, thirsty for the summer rays, line the route on which we drive our white Peugeot rental car. Each night of our ten-day journey we spread out a map on the bed to plot the following day’s destination. We call ahead to book a room in a relais, or inn, and the next morning begin to make our way toward our final destination, the southwestern city of Toulouse. During World War II, my maternal grandparents were deported to concentration camps—and survived. But my mother and her sister were given refuge in Toulouse, hidden by nuns in a Franciscan convent near the city center.

Along the way we pause in quaint villages for lunch or a café crème, but more often we pick up food at local markets for a picnic lunch. When hunger strikes, we pull over alongside one of those inviting sunflower fields, throw down a blanket, and set up our meal. No matter what we eat, we wash it all down with long sips of red wine. We don’t always have cups, so we often savor the locally made wine straight from the bottle.

Sitting on a picnic blanket in the French countryside with my mother was pure joy—at both age seven and age twenty. During the second trip, our lunches were filled with discussions about my life and hers, the growing complexities for me as a young adult, the middle-aged challenges for her, the future for us both. I felt as if I could tell her anything. We weren’t just enjoying life, we were sharing a piece of her heritage that I’d already embraced with gusto—the language, literature, culture, and lifestyle, and of course the wine.

GROWING UP WITH A FRENCH mother was different. She had an accent that I wasn’t always proud of, and she had unusual habits, such as blasting opera at high volume throughout the house and sunbathing topless—not just on the beaches in Cannes but also on our back porch. A green-tinted glass bottle filled with chablis was always chilling in the fridge, and on the shelf below rested a glass plate that held four or five imported cheeses. For my brother and me, there was an ample supply of tiny little squares of La Vache Qui Rit cheese (known to most as the Laughing Cow). My parents drank wine at every meal, and when I went to bed, I said bonne nuit rather than good night.

At least once a month, my parents got together with their mostly European friends for dinner parties, Sunday afternoon card games, or barbecues. We kids were always included in these lengthy gatherings. We listened to the music and singing (one of my dad’s pals played the accordion) and observed the dancing and drinking. The meals lasted for hours, and by dessert time, empty bottles of wine and liquor were strewn across the table. The adults, many of whom I addressed as “aunt” and “uncle,” belted out songs in a half dozen languages. The festivities would go on so late that I’d eventually find a couch or bed to curl up on, only to be carried to the car by my dad in the middle of the night for the drive home.

Growing up in surroundings where alcohol was present and enjoyed, but not abused, paved the way for my own drinking habits. As soon as I was of drinking age, I gave no thought to drinking with meals, at bars, during parties, yet I never felt the urge to get rip-roaring drunk. A slight buzz satisfied me just fine, and any time I drank enough to wake up with a hangover, it came with a clear “that was so not worth it” realization.

After several failed relationships, I was fortunate to find a man who not only shared a Holocaust background (he could relate to my family’s craziness) but also loved to party. I remember wintry Sunday afternoons early in our marriage when we’d watch all three Godfather movies and warm up with a bottle of red wine. We went to the West Village on the third Thursday of every November for a burger and the newly released beaujolais nouveau. When we traveled to Brazil, we fell in love with the Brazilian “national drink,” the caipirinha—still my favorite cocktail. And in Barcelona we rested our weary feet with a tapas meal that lasted for hours, accompanied by one (or was it two?) bottles of a Spanish rosado.

Parenthood changed our lives but not our love of making life just a little bit more fun—with drink. Though I didn’t consume wine while breastfeeding (well, maybe just a little), a green-tinted glass bottle continued to chill in our fridge as it had in my childhood home. Around the same time, however, things in my parents’ house began to shift. My father started having difficulty keeping enough wine in the house for my mother’s escalating drinking habit.

In 1996, when my mother was sixty-two, her mother passed away. It was the first time I’d ever seen her truly depressed. Losing her mother again, this time for eternity, brought up my mother’s childhood trauma and sent her to a dark place. Alcohol became the most effective and “acceptable” way to numb her pain.

Her glass of white wine followed her wherever she went—around the house, from the kitchen to her office, into the bedroom, and of course out at restaurants. It even went with her on train trips to Boston, where my brother then lived, and on car rides to visit friends.

THOUGH I WAS WORRIED about my mom’s drinking, my life as a writer and mother of young kids was harried and hectic, and I looked forward to sipping my own glass of wine, particularly when cooking dinner. Often, I pictured my mother when she was my age, clutching a wineglass, standing in her kitchen—the heart of my childhood home—sautéing vegetables, poaching pears, or grating a chunk of gruyère cheese for her homemade onion soup. For me, the habit of simultaneously sipping and cooking was comfortable. Natural.

By the time my father was diagnosed in 2003 with inoperable colon cancer, my mother’s drinking had morphed into need and began to steal her away, too. During his numerous hospital stays, I’d visit daily and often find my mother lying in bed alongside my father, usually passed out. She carried a tote bag everywhere she went, and its contents always included a bottle of wine and, in time, vodka.

My mom’s drinking made her angry. I tried hard to shield my children from her erratic behavior, but it was difficult, since part of her pattern involved leaving voice messages on our home answering machine, screaming and crying for me to call her back. One day, during a walk to school, my then-five-year-old son asked, “Mom, why do you and Néné fight so much?”

SINCE MY FATHER’S DEATH in 2006, my mother has only grown more depressed. She was kicked out of one retirement community because of her drinking and the tirades and wacky behavior that ensued. At holiday meals at my house, she has gulped from the drinks of my friends who’ve gone to the bathroom or turned their heads for a moment. When confronted, she denies she has, or has ever had, a problem.

After my son’s graduation from elementary school in spring 2011, my family, including both my mother and my mother-in-law, attended a celebration lunch at a local restaurant. There was a mix-up with our reservation, and they needed to set up another table for us. By way of apology, the maître d’ sent over a tray of champagne glasses, filled to the rim with sparkling prosecco. I immediately leaned forward to block my mother’s view and told the waiter we’d be declining but were grateful for the gesture. At that moment my seemingly placid mother jumped out of her seat and reached across my body to grab one of the flutes from the waiter’s tray. I pried it out of her grasp, handed it to the stunned waiter, and demanded she sit down. The mood, once celebratory, became thick with embarrassment and tension. Needless to say, it was a very long lunch.

Like my mother, I love my wine. But, sadly, it has become loaded with the worry that one day I will like it too much—and need it like she did. Because that dread has taken up residence in my mind, I don’t enjoy wine the way I used to. I watch my intake, limit the frequency, and try hard not to pour a glass of wine as a way to ease pain or stress.

My mom’s drinking has also affected the way I parent. While I grew up in the midst of a laissez-faire, booze-it-up European setting (I will never forget getting drunk at age fourteen on whiskey sours at my father’s fiftieth birthday party), I chose to approach my teenage daughters with a “drinking talk” once they started going to high school parties. I’ve actually sat on our living room couch and heard myself say things like, “Never drink something that you didn’t pour yourself” and, “Don’t ever get into a car with someone who’s been drinking. We’ll pick you up anywhere, anytime.” But I’m a product of my upbringing and have also told them, “Just hold a beer if you want to look like you’re drinking, and no one will know.”

The very notion of limiting alcohol consumption or needing to make conscious decisions around drinking is foreign to me. For me, drinking was an all-out good thing. Not something to worry about, keep away from, or even indulge in. It was pure fun. But I now understand that limits can be useful. Knowledge is power. And I believe it’s helpful for my children to understand the nuances of my mother’s cultural custom-turned-addiction.

My daughters, now sixteen and eighteen, have unfortunately seen it all. Perhaps knowing that someone as capable, smart, and talented as their grandmother can slide down that slippery slope will give them an insight that I never had.

For them, drinking may never be carefree. When they were younger, I protected them from much of the anguish and spared them the exposure as best as I could. But now the elephant in the room is too big to hide.

After my son’s graduation lunch, my eldest daughter turned to me and said, “I felt bad for Simon today. I think it’s the first time he ever saw Néné act that way.”