August 5, 2010: The Box

 I live in the country on a farm. One of the dubious benefits is having a burn
pile when needed. Dubious since it's not an environmental thumbs up.  We don't burn often, only a handful of times a year. There is something incredibly pleasing about watching a can full of combustibles reduced to a pile of ash, washed away by the wind and rain. Very pleasing indeed.

This week I burned my box. The one I kept in my car for holding plastic grocery
bags for recycling. Under which I hid my wine bottle for car drinking. For
several years, I kept a bottle in my box, ironically stashed under an emergency
roadside kit in my box in my trunk. On my 40 minute drive home I would pour
myself about a half bottle into my coffee pint glass from the morning, and drink
it down to prepare for the evening ahead as I drove the back roads home. The
rituals around getting the box from the back of the car to where I could get at
it, where on the route I could manage to get it out, pour the glassful, drink,
then return it to the back of the car required a lot of rigamarole and a large
place in my brain.

The box sides were torn. At times the sides bulged with lots of recycling bags.
It was a Smirnoff box. One of many that carried home my wine supply. I'm not
sure why this one was in use for so long.

I almost got a DUI fiddling with this box. I had stopped near my house on an
empty lane in a subdivision to move the box from my front seat to the back of my
car post evening drink, forgetting that a couple of cops lived in the
subdivision. I didn't see the car while rushing to stuff the box in my trunk,
but it followed me up my road, the lights started flashing when I turned into my
driveway. I was scared beyond belief, my mind so blank I couldn't even
hypocritically pray for god's intervention.

I took the breathalyzer test. The cop looked from me, to the small machine in
his hand, back at me. He checked the address on my mailbox against my license. 
I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to breath boozy fumes on him, and I wasn't
sure how words would sound coming out of my mouth, so I stayed silent. He
looked at the machine, at me. The moment stretched, as they do when life as you
know it hangs by a thread.

He let me off with a warning. He and I both knew it was a pity move. Only
possible because I was literally on my driveway. I shook as I drove to the
house, pulled into the garage, made light of the situation with my husband. A
neighbor had called when he saw the lights and my car.

I quit 3 months to the day later. I just realized that while I wrote this. I
wish I could say I never used that box again. I didn't for a couple of months. 
But as I neared my bottom, I did use it again that last month. God, the lies I
told myself.

This last week I had 4 months sober and I burned the box. It was reduced to a
tiny pile of ash. Washed away by the wind and the summer rain.