A WOMAN WALKS INTO A BAR

A WOMAN WALKS INTO A BAR

A young woman walks into a bar. Fortunately for her and for the people who care about her, it’s her bar, our bar, or more precisely, the island bar, and there she finds community.

Years ago, the island had one particular drinker whose life then and for the next sixty years was miraculous. He was one of many drunks—others whose resolve was less than the astonishing determination he brought to bear years later. Thought impolitic to say today, these few guys were called the drunks, and they were, as their successors are, as much a part of the fabric of town as any of the rest of us. His addiction, in particular, was so profound that he was sometimes encountered prone in the middle of Main Street and had to be dragged to the sidewalk so he wouldn’t be run over. It seemed clear to us then—he was forty or so—that his days were numbered. They weren’t though, and therein lay the miracle. Nearly fifty years later, having achieved sobriety in the most unlikely of circumstances, he finally did pass on, of natural causes, at nearly ninety. He’d been a belove institution of one sort and had become an even more beloved and remarkable institution of an entirely other sort by the time he died. Part of what was remarkable was the way in which and the environment in which he chose to free himself from this compelling addiction.

          He returned every day to the bar! He achieved and the young woman is achieving, recovery in the company of and, I’m guessing, with the support of, their fellow drinkers. I can easily call those accomplishments remarkable because I am not a regular patron of the bar. I don’t know what goes on there, and it would be transparently clear to anyone who knows me (everyone) if I pretended otherwise.

          Still, I call their achievements miraculous because it just doesn’t make sense to me that to quit drinking one would choose to go to a bar. Clearly there’s more to this than meets my un-enlightened eye.

          Sitting in the adjacent dining room, I offer my heartfelt encouragement and congratulations—everyone knows everything in a little town like this—as she passes by my table on the way to the bar. She thanks me and acknowledges her accomplishments, proudly reciting the number of days she has been clean, and they are many. There is community in the bar, their community—his not long ago and now hers—and it seems to work in a way that, while foreign to me, was nonetheless for him, and is now for her, a remarkable and supremely effective support structure.