Grizzly Growler

This is celebration week at GrizzlyGrowler.Com.

Maybe it’s because I miss my family, most of whom I have only seen once this year when we gathered for my grandfather’s funeral last May. Maybe it’s because in this beat-down economy and charged political climate, we’re not celebrating enough. Maybe it’s because we don’t think there is much to celebrate right now.

If any of those are you, then this post if for you. If not, then scroll down and watch the last VLOG I did.

My family celebrates every chance we get. My grandparents were immigrants who traveled the entire Eurasian continent to escape persecution in their home country of Ukraine. They lived in Central Asia for many years and in Northwest China for 16 years. My father was born in China just a few years before my grandparents, feeling the persecution of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, fled to the Philippines. Eventually, they caught a ride across the ocean on a U.S. Navy vessel. Instead of sailing under the welcoming eyes of Lady Liberty, they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of setting up shop in Brighton Beach, they lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Geary Street.

It wasn’t an easy life, and along the way they lost children, my own father nearly died of the measles as an infant. But one thing they never lost was the ability to celebrate.

Birthdays, weddings, deaths, each was a significant part of every family member’s life. No matter where a family member was located, we would travel to be with them in celebration.

We celebrated for the sake of being together, and almost any event could be turned into a celebration. When my grandfather was younger, my grandmother would prepare huge amounts of our favorite Russian, Central Asian and Chinese dishes in advance of our arrival.

My grandfather would pour himself a beer and sit at the table and watch us, content to just bask in the noise and excitement of the visit. Later, when my grandmother forbade him to drink because of health concerns, he would take a little nip of beer in the basement when we came home from a painting job in the city. It was his way of celebrating the end of an enjoyable day of working with his grandsons.

Sometimes we drank wine, sometimes we drank beer. But neither were an integral part of our celebration. They simply added to the enjoyment, the ambiance, the emotive goodness of being gathered together.

Food, in its way, was as much a part of celebration as alcohol was, and that is my point. We’ve lost sight of the balancing roll things like food and alcohol can play in our lives. Taken in moderation, sweet treats, alcoholic drinks, even seeing family, provides the natural ligaments of our lives. They are connectors that help us fully live within the confines of our lives.

Beer, for the past 60 years, has been associated with guzzling and quantity, rather than sipping and quality. Beer is for celebrations that are often perceived as destructive, and or degrading.

Many people celebrate today by announcing: “I’m going to go out and get totally smashed tonight.” This is not celebration, it is an attempt to completely separate oneself from reality, which is to remove oneself from relationships, responsibility and even the nature of reflection that helps us see ourselves in a different light, and which can help us change to become better human beings.

Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with excessive celebration. At times, celebration can be so overwhelmingly good that we tend to imbibe more than if celebration were not such a wonderful assault on the senses.

A good hangover, serving its purpose, should tell us that: “Hey, you partied a little too hard last night, you might want to watch how much red wine you consume next time.” This is all fine and dandy and nothing to write home about or plan an intervention for.

However, when we fail to listen to our bodies, our bodies often give us up to the poisons we inflict upon them. Alcoholism is a real thing that affects many people, and, as a drug, it is more pervasive than any other.

That brings me back to balance. I learned about how to celebrate from my grandparents and my parents. They took every opportunity to celebrate life, and now I’m taking every opportunity to celebrate. Today we make a special meal on Sundays, usually consisting of a family recipe, or something we haven’t tried before. My kids understand that wine and beer are for celebrating, and their curiosity about what wine tastes like and how beer is made is healthy.

They also know that kids shouldn’t drink alcohol, but they understand that when they grow up they might be interested in wine or beer. It’s not a mystery to them. Right now, they don’t like the taste of it. As they grow up, that will change.

Celebrating in a healthy way is so much a part of our historical culture. It marks a passage of time, and it is a way of writing our own individual and family histories in a way that might never be recorded but that might be passed down from generation to generation.

More on celebration later.

Prost,

GG