More good memories

Winter, 2014. My parents have been dead since fall of 2011 and I'm coping well with it. Not that I'm over it; that never happens. But I'm fine and doing a good job of managing the store I've worked in for a dozen years. I work Wednesday through Sunday, with Monday and Tuesday off. I like this. The store is busy on weekends so time goes fast and having Monday and Tuesday off means I can shop and do errands in uncrowded stores. 

A Whole Foods beer growler.

I take the train back to my suburban home. Usually, my bicycle awaits me but on weekends I drive the short distance to and from the train station, knowing that parking is free and that there will be plenty of spaces. I have a beer growler in the car and I drive to a nearby Whole Foods. It's an expensive store, yes, but this is my weekly treat. I go to the little section where they can legally sell beer and wine—a recent development in Pennsylvania at the time—and look at the list of craft beers they've written up on a chalkboard. The first thing you notice is that the higher the percentage of alcohol the beer has, the more it cost. It's a little off-putting to see this. It makes you realized that you're buying a drug and you feel uneasy about that, as if addiction is in your near future. I get intoxicated easily so I try to discount this and buy something that sounds like it will taste interesting. Not too interesting. I don't want beer that taste like chocolate or blueberries. 
I tell the Whole Foods staffer which one I'd like. He opens the growler and sniffs it to make sure it's clean. If it's not, he or one of his coworkers told me once, he won't fill it as it could make me ill and I'd blame them. That's never happened, so the growler gets filled. He seals it with a sticky thing that goes over the top. He writes the name of what I've gotten on the round part of the sticker. Later, at home, I'll stick this part on the bottle and as weeks go by it gets crowded with them. It's like I'm a fighter pilot and these are the planes I've short down. 
I pay for it and some other small special thing to go with dinner and go home. The thermostat is programmed so the house is warm when I get back. I turn on the radio, cook my meal, eat it and drink some of the beer while reading the Sunday New York Times. 
I'm alone, of course, but I've reached a point in my life where I'm fine with that. If there's any pang over this solitary meal being my Sunday dinner, the beer washes it away.