A New Life – Life on a Tightrope

This morning, I woke before sunrise to get ready for a long, busy day. The house was quiet, my work out was finished, and I had 25 minutes to myself before the kids had to be up to get ready for school.

There were a dozen things I could have done in that time, all things on my to-do list, waiting for my attention. Instead, I made myself a cup of coffee and stepped out into the unmistakable feeling of a morning on the brink of autumn. I could hear the early birds all around me, catching their worms. The sky was lighting up in every direction, waiting for the sun to crest above the mountains.

In the distance I could hear a tractor chugging, making its way through the vineyard where pickers were loading bins with seven thousand pounds of grapes. In that moment, unexpectedly, I was overwhelmed with happiness and hope.

Two years ago, my life was so very different. Life as I knew it, as I planned it, was coming unraveled at a pace I couldn’t keep up with. Things were going to change. They had to. I knew some things would get better, and that some things would get worse.

I didn’t realize until this morning, watching the sunrise in this beautiful place I now get to call home…

…that I had very little hope of ever feeling this kind of happiness. In my mind, I suppose, blissful happiness was a memory, a ghost to be longed for and remembered.

I have a new life. One that I love, that my kids love. It’s been hard, this road. But when I look at where I’ve been, now that I’m here, things have a rosy hue that they didn’t have before. Now that I know where the path leads, the brambles that cut me as I hacked my way through don’t seem quite so menacing.

I wake my kids up each morning and take them to a new school, in a new place, and they are thriving. I volunteer in Blythe’s Kindergarten classroom and I think about how, if I hadn’t taken this leap of faith and moved last May, I wouldn’t have the flexibility to do that.

During the week I crunch numbers and on the weekend, I pour wine for people who are at their happiest, all on vacation and sipping wine with friends and lovers. Life is busy and full of the best of every world.

And now, with harvest in full swing, I can get sticky hand sorting grapes as they’re brought in from the vineyard. As the days, weeks and months pass, I get to watch their metamorphosis and eventually, drink the wine they will become.

Today, as I sorted through thousands of pounds of Grenache and Syrah, joking with the crush crew that has become my vineyard family, I realized something. We spend these grueling hours hand sorting every cluster of grapes, removing the bad stuff: bugs, leaves, sticks, mice, mildew… so that in the end, our hard work and patience pay off and we have the most beautiful, amazing wine to drink.