the first autumn of quarantine, i decided to try my hand at making some wine. my next-door neighbors have a plum tree that they never utilize, since it’s not one of those amicable fruit trees that was strongarmed into producing tasty fruit by generations of botanists. the tree looked pained, and was willowing with fruit, so i helped it take a load off. i spent a few hours slicing each plum directly in half, removing the pit, and throwing the fleshy halves into a bag to freeze. the plums are hard, and they leave your throat dry and sticky, but i’ve heard a rumor that their bitter bodies belie their sweet blood.
i’m making wine because i’m throwing hobbies at the wall to see what sticks, because i need to spend more time making things. many therapists and several textbooks have told me that taking your hands and making something is a great way to prove to yourself that you do, in fact, have the power to affect the world around you. but there’s a more specific reason, too. at the first college i attended, there was a professor of monster theory. he taught me that if you really wanted to be thorough, once a vampire was turned to ash, you could mix their ashes into a few bottles of wine and drink it, thereby absorbing, transmuting, and scattering the fiend’s body. i’ve wanted to test the exorcising capabilities of wine and the body ever since.
when i was physically attending college, my days were busy and i was nearly always tired enough to sleep at night. this year the difference of night or day feels inconsequential, and while i haven’t yet started dreaming, visions of people come regularly. i often try to sleep with some percentage of my brain utterly convinced something is loose in my house. “of course there is nobody here. i locked the door. i left my room open for the cat. nobody is sneaking in tonight." but my words have rung hollow for some time now, and i knew i was going to have to make some kind of witch’s brew to purge myself of these hellish worries. i could work it out from a doctor’s armchair, but that’s been my go-to for years and i want to explore my options.
i picked six and a half pounds of plums, about the weight of a healthy newborn, and left them in my freezer for a week awaiting reanimation. i took them out to thaw this morning, and i started making a list. now it is past midnight, i’ve sterilized all my implements, and i start to place the plums one by one into a mesh bag within a brand-new bucket. each time i reach into a freezer-bag of soggy plums, i pull out two cleft halves and whisper a secret from my list into the hollow where the pit was. something i’m ashamed of, or embarrassed of, even if i know it doesn’t matter, even if i know i’m the only one who remembers. each pair of halves is messily sealed and tossed into the mesh bag. i do this over and over, until everything that’s been keeping me up at night has been deposited into the cauldron. then i pulverize everything with a potato masher. i’m sure some of my words will clog up the straining bag, but most of them will get into the brew. i add most of my baby’s weight in sugar-water, pour it through the mesh bag, and leave it to sit for about a day. this is so the sugar and the plums and the secrets all become one thing, instead of different things sitting together in a bucket. i stay up all night in case she cries out.
in the morning, i will add sterilizing tablets. after a full day, i add the yeast. really, the plums and the sugar are the wet food you sneak your cat’s medicine into, in two senses. when the yeast is chowing down on the contents of the bucket, it doesn’t know it’s also grinding pulled teeth from my anxious demons. and secondly, i know eventually i’ll have to come to terms with the fact that these are simply memories, rather than nightmares, and take the medicine myself. the rest of the process of wine-making i’ll do by the book, and in a year or so when she’s all grown up i do intend to share them — under the condition that we never drink to forget, only to remember, and every sip is a toast to our failures and insecurities. hopefully this will be cheaper than therapy.