viragette

I have a special relationship with Tanqueray. London Dry Gin. In the green bottle with the white label and the red dot seal. My father is an alcoholic, and Tanqueray is his drink.

I can remember the recycling on the back porch. Saved for collection that came once a week, maybe every other week? On the back porch, the big glass bottles would be lined up against the white clapboard wall. Five or six of them at a time. The big ones. I can remember how it smelled, in the tonic water. I never gave it a moments thought. That maybe other people didn’t consume gallons of gin. I mean, I knew he was an alcoholic. At some point.

But for most of my childhood, I didn’t know. I mean, I knew what an alcoholic was. I just didn’t put two and two together. I remember the first time I realized that he was drunk when we were driving. It was a drizzling Friday afternoon, rush hour, and he had come to collect my little brother and I in the red Ford pickup truck. “Big Red”, whose paint was slightly faulty because he’d spent so much time waxing it when he got it. In the years before me. That truck had a wonderful engine sound. And that evening at 4:00 in the dim Seattle light, he picked us up from Mom’s house (which used to be where we all lived), and we were going down to his house. His girlfriend’s house, really. A woman who I love like a friend who was never my sister, and never my stepmother, and something all to herself.

We were waiting for the light to change and I can’t remember what it was that my little brother said, but instead of hitting (he didn’t hit), my father put the hammer down on the gas and suddenly the tires of the truck were squealing and we were turning the corner into oncoming traffic from 45th street. They had a green turn signal and we simply cut across them, and roared with that incredible engine sound down the freeway on-ramp. A ramp that was metered at that hour but we were carpool. My drunken father and his two little kids counted, certainly. And I was holding onto the door handle and realizing, over the noise of the engine, the squealing tires, and whatever it was that he was saying, because he rarely sounded drunk, that he was. He was drunk. And we were on the freeway now heading over the crest of the bridge, eight lanes across with a breath-taking vista of the city and the mountains on two sides, and suddenly I could smell the Gin in the cab with us. The Tanqueray, London Dry Gin, from the green bottle with the red dot. And I thought, “well, he’s driving drunk. Which means, we’re going to die”. I searched myself for fear, as that seemed the proper thing.  But I failed again.  It wasn’t a frightening thought, it was just the situation.

Tonic water was not so necessary later. It was on the rocks, then straight up. In a big cup. A coffee mug. A stainless steel one, because everything is special and beautiful when it comes to my father. It’s true. He is one of the special, beautiful people.

I didn’t drink when I was in high school, or college. I had a glass of wine maybe once a year. Not only did it not appeal, it had baggage. And even now, about to be forced to update my “about” blurb and officially enter 30+, I’m learning what alcohol is. I don’t know very much about it. And when I go out and am asked what I want, I don’t really know, or care. And so I say: “Gin and Tonic”, or better yet, “Tanqueray and Tonic.” And when I go to the store, and decide on an impulse to buy something to stock the bar, inevitably I buy that green bottle with the white label and the red seal. Because of my father. Because no matter what, I will always love him. Because, in my way, we make our peace this way.

I drove to Minnesota for Father’s Day to see him. And as I drove there I recollected a phone coversation with my grandmother. My father has recently stopped drinking Gin. He can’t afford it, being an unemployed alcoholic who lives with his mother, and thus has switched to Whisky. While I was there, in my hometown, I bought him his Father’s Day gift. I bought him a bottle of Tanqueray. Not the big one, the medium sized one. I put it in the freezer in the plain brown paper bag - upon which I had written: “For Dad. Happy Father’s Day. With Hope for the Future and Love Forever.”

And when I gave it to him, his eyes filled with tears. He kissed my forehead and was staggering drunk by the end of the evening. And I love him for that, because he is my father and that is what it means to love him.