I rolled up the door of unit 22, my hands shaking with dread, and the cool air rolled out, and the light fell on racks, floor to ceiling, of wine bottles, hundreds of them, laid on their sides in the climate-controlled dark, each one labeled in Geralds careful hand with a date.
I stood in that doorway, my fear giving way to bewilderment.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, the woman had said, and now it made perfect sense, wine spoils in heat and freezes ruined in cold, it must be kept cool and steady, and my Gerald had been building a cellar, out here, in secret.
The man who told me when he changed a light bulb had been quietly collecting wine for thirteen years, one bottle at a time, and laying it down to age in a climate-controlled room.
But it was not just any collection. As I looked closer, I saw the dates on the labels, and I began to understand, and my eyes filled.
Every bottle was marked with a year that mattered to us. The year we married. The years each of our children were born. The year we bought our house. And most of all, a whole special rack marked for our fortieth anniversary, and beyond that, bottles marked for our childrens future anniversaries, our grandchildrens weddings, years and years into the future.
His letter, on the little table, explained. He wrote: Old girl, I started laying down a bottle for every big day in this family, to be opened on the anniversaries and the weddings and the births still to come. A fine wine needs years to become itself, and it needs to be kept cool, so here it waits. I wanted our family to toast every happy day for the next fifty years with wine I chose with my own hand, thinking of them. I will not be at all those celebrations. But my wine will. Open them at the right times, old girl, and I will be there too. Love, Gerald.
I wept among my husbands bottles, each one a future toast he had prepared in advance.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because he was keeping joy for years he knew he would not see.
I have been opening them at the right times ever since. At our daughters anniversary, we opened the bottle marked with her wedding year, and we toasted the grandfather who chose it. At my grandsons graduation, another. Each one a gift from Gerald, arriving on schedule, from beyond.
My son did not know why I drove out toward the airport. Now he knows his daddy laid down a toast for every happy day this family will ever have. Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because he was aging joy for the future. We toast him at every celebration now. He is at every one. He made sure of it.