THE night goes on and as the bottles of wine and grappa and madarino and lemoncello slowly diminish the conversation livens, the stories fill with ideas of granduer and feelings are revealed. We catch up on a cousin's job and a friend's new city over coffee. We listen to the illness of some and the remembrance of those that are no longer with us as we attempt a sweet. We try to adjust. We eventually do.
THEN your little sister, tipsy and lovely tells you in a higher decibel than usual conversation how mad she is at you that you did not show enough excitement for her very nice date with a new guy she met.
How do I know she was tipsy? If you know my sister you know right away she is a guy magnet. Her long blond hair and long fabulous legs do not even touch the magnitude of her love of fun and appreciation of everything, and not only when the martinis are flowing. Therefore, she has had, to all of our dismay, many, many fun and fabulous and unusual dates. She even married someone once and had a storybook wedding day. So, when she mentions a really great date, it isn't like the gremlin got asked out by the prince.
I think she likes to tease me.
Anyways...we all started to pay attention when she mentioned this new guy has a job. A real job. A good job. A Vice President of an investment firm job. Well, then, I even started to listen.
Since my sister was about 14, I got used to her being picked up in limousines or men giving her fur coats on a second date (that was the year my husband gave me a nice sharp nice for Christmas). So...when she MENTIONED she met someone at work who took her to a company Christmas party at a country club and immediately stated the food was fabulous, and, being me, who receives knives as presents, my focus was on the fabulous food. Compared with Beef en Croute, a vice president can be, well, ordinary. But to my little sister, the tipsy, lovely one, nothing is ordinary. And the fact that I grew to excitedly anticipate kitchen equipment as gifts is as my sister's post date phone calls and messages, and tiered chocolate tour gift nothing short of miraculous. This is one normal guy. Did I mention he has a good job?
He is divorced and if he had a wife who was high maintenance, which many, many women are these days, but who knows, he must immediately have felt relief and fun with my little, tipsy, lovely sister.
So my little, tipsy, lovely sister left my house with her daughter, refusing to be driven home, with sugar plums dancing in her head. She lives a few blocks away and said she and her daughter would skip all the way home. Her daughter looked at me and said (very seriously because this seems to be a habit)..."Oh, no, not skipping!" with a big smile on her face.
I sure hope that guy, whatever his name is, with the good vice president job and nice manners, and touching voice messages knows what a great girl he found.... A little tipsy but quiet lovely, indeed.
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