advice - from my mother

These wise words of my mother are more of an observation than advice, but they can be applied to great benefit for health and behaviour.

My mother did not drink alcohol except perhaps occasionally a liqueur or cordial, particularly Manischewitz, a low alcohol sweet wine beverage. She did not like the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. My guess is, growing up on a farm in Eastern Poland, she probably encountered people consuming moonshine to ill effect. Regardless, having grown up in Poland, she definitely saw the consumption of great amounts of vodka. As I did through my travels in Eastern Europe.

She was sent to university as she showed great promise as a child, attending the Politechnika Warszawska. She studied mathematics and graduated with a post-graduate degree (probably a Masters, she left her sheepskin in Poland). While living in Warsaw, she enjoyed riding around on her motor-scooter and soaking up as much culture and history as she could attending plays, music recitals and going to libraries and museums. One thing she did not do, was get hammered every weekend like many university students did and do.

Having seen the effects of alcohol on people, she correctly saw that it could reduce a person's behaviour to a very low level. My mother believed in hard work and propriety. She became a teacher. When she fled communism and came to Canada and married my father, she held to those beliefs.

She held a multitude of jobs in Canada over the years, ranging from a Polish language night school teacher, to working in a diaper factory, picking fruit, caretaker, rental hall manager, caterer, and a hospital worker. She had a very hard life in some ways, but she was always there for her family. 

That is not to say that she sat in the dark in her frock coat and bonnet for fun. She loved to go to the beach, pick mushrooms in the forest, have family gatherings with great big feasts, and travel when she could. She just did not see the purpose of drinking to excess. She once expounded her thoughts on that to me when I was a young lad.

She commented that previously, from when she grew up to about the early 1970s, when people drank liquor, they normally drank it straight or with water and not in fancy cocktails filled with fruit and adulterants, such as juices and soft drinks. With the growing popularity of frou-frou drinks, she noticed people drank more. She determined that it was in part that they did not taste the alcohol and drank faster and more. Honestly, she was not wrong.

Unfortunately, my personal experience as a young man had proven her theory more than once. Ah, but the arrogance of youth. Years later, I did realise what she said was true. If you drink alcohol you cannot taste, you drink it like water. Coolers are probably the worst for that. I have seen people drink four or five of them in less than an hour and wonder why they cannot remember what they were conversing about. Well, it is because they are smashed.

I am not saying that drinking should be banned and that I never drink. However, I now try to temper that with how I drink. It does not necessarily always work, but recently, I have noticed I have slowed down and my engagements with the bottle are shorter; long family visits sometimes being the exception.

My favourite tipples are Canadian Rye or Bourbon, particularly and respectively Alberta Premium and Four Roses. When I do imbibe in the brown liquors, it is on ice or cut with water or club soda. That way, one still tastes the alcohol for all its goodness and sin. Unfortunately, this of course does not really work with wine, or beer in particular. And of course, one can still drink too much even if it is not cut, but those are different issues.

My mother had it pegged: drink alcohol to savour its subtleties and layers not to wreck yourself; drink enough to have a good time, not so you cannot remember what an ass you were the night before; it is not hard to enjoy a few drinks, but it is easy to enjoy too many. blbbl

as my mom might say, "don't let this be you." (courtesy imgur.com)