Early in the evening the band, three musicians, John P on bass, local legend, Rick on arch top guitar, Renee vocals, are sitting around, first at the bar to have a little bread and a cup of hot water for the singer, then at low table closest to the corner where they are set up.  They are due to start playing at 6:30, but the only customers are a couple of young people at the bar, who did go to work on President's Day, and a guy we've seen before who choses a Bordeaux for a glass to start, and then when his date shows, a bottle of wine from the list, and they haven't taken to their table yet also near the band.  The first wine we agree upon to look for, a Syrah heavy Clos Des Mures from the Languedoc turns out we're out of, so I bring up from the cellar Z Wine Gallery import's Rasteau, a great value wine in the Chat-du-Pape region, decanting it for them.  "It's going to fill up soon," I tell the band.  And the quiet before the storm makes me nervous.  Reservations to seat, walk-ins, complications, and the busser Hugo hasn't taken much of an interest in set-up up at the bar here, leaving me to do it, and the server my friend is looking down at her iPhone back behind the bar nearby texting in Russian, as if everyone was preparing to being bored and standing around and getting in the way rather than be accurately useful.

And then, we get hit, and our fishing lines are speeding out after this fleeing harpooned whale of attempted dinner service, and even the boss sees we're busy and pitches in, helping us out with the glassware.  And here we are, madness again.  Good for business.  Hey.  Old friends, who had their rehearsal dinner are back at the last table, furthest away for the bar, to be joined by a third, so I bring them, when I can, a little wine magic to shrink their therapeutic need, as the chaos mounts.

So distracted am I that I forget to fire the bass player's salmon entree in time for the first break.  The band waits around, asking for it, and I do a little explaining, and "fucked if I know, soon hopefully.." will the dish arrive.  "Sorry.  We got hit all at once..."  This happens in the melee that is Jazz Night.  Last night was no goddamn picnic either for the barman left alone to run the whole room  by himself on Sunday night before the Federal Holiday, and it would have been nice if the boss had come in that night.  He is being helpful tonight, but everything is a mad scramble, bread, butter, water, the next round, interrupted by attempts to help deliver everything, and everyone in each other's way, the server demanding an ice bucket when that is not the first thing on the barman's triage list of things to do immediately and quickly and now.  A woman I've not even seen come in addresses me at the restroom end of the bar, poking her head through the urn of dried reeds, asking me to ask the singer to sing Happy Birthday for her husband, right at this wrong time.  A group is gathering at the mouth of the bar, first four, now eight, blocking the short way around to the back room tables...


Mom, elderly, approaching 80 years of age, has a cough that is deepening, and has told me that she wishes she had a thermometer.  I gently ask her, as I walk to work, if she's attended to the usual, cat food, mom food, chardonnay...  She's getting a tiny bit foggier about bills maybe, from the holiday onslaught, and when she calls about eleven fifteen in the night as I put the bar back together and put things away in the cooler, she is again confused about where she is and why, and isn't there another place closer to Oswego, and does she need to put her cat in a carrier in the car to get there, and I always tell her, of late, no, mom, you're already home, you don't need to go anywhere.

To great relief though, the cough, as she has bronchitis, she tells me, has warmed her up to the thought of seeing the doctor her friends have been suggesting.  And when she calls in the morning still with a cough, with an email to her friends, they are on it to take her to the doctor, to the urgent care office attached to the good woman Doctor Ram they know so she'll be able to get taken care of.  This is still fairly early in the morning for me, but I feel a great gratitude to my mom's friends, true to faith in the helping out of others, even putting the academic department meeting aside.  Lent is a good season, isn't it.


Perhaps part of the strain of the job of barman such as it is, beyond the physical, the weary leg muscles clenching at movements, the tiredness that comes out of the endurance, whether or not you sleep well, is the clash, the inevitable rub from the real job of ministering to people, listening to them, greeting them and their issues to talk over, the putting them at ease with familiarity and comfort, and that more practical, I suppose, arena of secular commerce, the things done to get the job done and the sales in the financial books, the credit card charges sorted out, the wine poured equals wine sold and on the check...

I found that it was easier when I kept the sight on spiritual part.  That just made it simpler and clearer and also worth doing in this world where we much search for meaning.


I was not, in certain ways, prepared to join in with the practices of what we might regard as mainstream Christianity.    It would not have occurred to me coming out of college as I was that I would be immediately ready for anything like a monastery...


Before work, waiting for news from Mom, I find Ed Sheeran Castle On The Hill comforting.  Artists I suppose are not the most utilitarian of people.  But they give us art, they help our spirits, they soothe  our memories and bring them good meaning.  Music and good songs get us over the bullies in our lives, the grump grandfather who tells you, more or less, get a job, the elder who tells you, shouts at you, grow up... as you are the wrong one, very wrong, when you bring up an old incident from your personal life, the delusional quality of trying to put any reasonable agreeable spin as such tales of fucking up adolescently, isn't that the whole point, to learn something, and then put it into song, so that your spirits lift and you can stay happy, as happy as when you're listening to an old early Beatles song, before they too grew up a little bit too much, ossified in adult seriousness, their humor turned a bit.

It is always good to remember where you came from, the rolling countryside of song and poetry...

That's were college started to disagree with me a bit.  The seriousness, the striving, the wishes upon the minds of my friends to go into investment banking, the legal profession, more so than humoring the whims of their own imaginations and spirits...  Whereas I immediately began to miss the dumb things we did as young folks out in the small town countryside and returned as soon as I could.

And those who also have been bullied, or have that sense, that awareness of how the bully is always ready to strike, those are the ones who get you, who care for you, who love you as a brother and support you and your life's meaning, AMEN.