the little things...

Last week, we were out at one of our favorite restaurants in Bozeman, barley & vine. We were chatting with one of the staff people there & as we were about to leave, he dropped a postcard on the table & said, You might Iike this...

It turned out that the this he was referring to was their trial run at doing a tasting menu. If you’ve never done one, it’s when the chef creates a five or six course dinner, paired with wine that’s specially selected to go with each dish. Which meant that one of our favorite chefs was going to play the whole night & we got to play right along by doing the eating part  :-).

Really, what’s not to love about that? Six courses paired with great Italian wines on a snowy evening six blocks from our house. 

So, last night, we gathered at a communal table with four strangers. Three & a half hours later, we left the company of friends. It was a magical evening. Filled with quiet conversations & loud opinions & plans for future meetings. Stories from the wine merchant about the essential nature of the grapes, then circling in closer & closer to the region, then the village & the vineyard & finally the families themselves. Moments of laughter & observation & under it all, that rich trill of delight of good food & good people being alive together...

We walked home, hand in hand. Replaying moments for each other. Breathless with the muchness of the night. This morning, I found myself remembering a fragment, a smile, a look on a glowing face & it struck me how little I needed to have an explanation for it. It was the all of it, everything weaving in & out. The parts I experienced, the parts I caught the barest edge of because my attention was somewhere else - on the flavors, or my eyes closed breathing in the wine that swirled in my glass, or the way Fia’s eyes sparkled as she talked with the women around her.

It was a night of little things. Beautiful, rich, memorable little things. It really was as simple as that...

with love, b

P.S. 'little things' comes in two versions. There's an older watercolor & this one you see here, which is from a new drawing I did last night. Click here if you'd like to see them both...