Bread and Salt

It’s an old tradition that when someone you love moves into a new house you bring them bread and salt as a housewarming present.

Bread so they’ll never go hungry. Salt so they’ll always be blessed with good luck.

I was thinking about housewarming gifts recently because my brother Kenny and his wife Mary Lu have just moved into a new apartment.  I was going to make my first state visit and I wanted to start things off right.

So before I stepped across their new threshold I wanted to bring them a great gift.  But what to buy?  After thirty-seven years together they have everything.  Knock wood.

As I was pondering this challenge, my mind wandered back to another housewarming present of many years ago. It was for their vacation home outside of Scottsdale, Arizona.  (Now sold, I am sorry to say.  I loved that place.  And its warm, dry desert climate is really looking good to me right about now.)

It was 1998 and Kenny and Mary Lu had invited Mike and I down from Colorado to see their new digs. A week’s stay was graciously proffered and we jumped at it.

For those of you who never had the pleasure, let me introduce you to Mike.  I married him in 1997.  Parted ways many years later.  (But we’re still friends.  Not all my divorces crash and burn.)

A gifted natural athlete, (an eleven letter man in high school- four for skiing, three for soccer, two for baseball, and two for track) there was no sport at which he didn’t excel. Mike was a longtime ski instructor for Aspen Skiing Company and coach of the Snowmass ski instructor’s demo team.  To watch him go down the hill was like watching frozen poetry in motion.

He skied as soon as he could walk.  He literally had no memory of life before he could schuss.  As opposed to yours truly.

I learned at forty, loved it from my first white knuckle snowplow, and struggled with it for a long time until I got decent.  As my son, Nick, liked to point out, “You know, Dude, the best thing about your skiing is that you suck but you know it.”

But before Mike became a ski instructor he had been a Marine.  (I never call him an ex Marine.  There is no such thing.)  He did two tours of duty in Viet Nam, rescuing and flying the wounded by helicopter to Norita, Japan for lifesaving treatment.  (Readers:  I made a mistake with this last bit.  It’s Zama, not Norita.  Please see Mike’s comment below for further explanation.)

And after the war, the Marines flew him around the world to helicopter crash sites so that he could investigate the causes.  He was a one-man NTSB.

And though modesty and sad memories forbade him from bragging, I can report that he was incredibly brave, a highly-decorated war hero and one very tough m.f. (Which are his initials, come to think of it.)

My kids and dog loved him.  And he was handsome, (I used to say he was so Irish even his eyes were green) funny and blessed with the gift of one who has bussed the Blarney stone.  He was liked by all- but men, particularly, responded to him.

When Mike and I first started going out in early ’97, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t making a post-divorce-trauma-induced mistake.  I wanted to double check on his rep.  So, as I went around Snowmass and Aspen- two very small towns- I would casually mention that he and I were an item.

The women were happy for me.  But the men would invariably respond with the same reaction.  Upon hearing my news, every guy I told would playfully punch me in the arm and say “Yo, Mike!”  (This is the universal “thumbs up” of jocks everywhere.) So “Yo, Mike!” and I were married that May.

But Mike had one other string to his bow.  Along with his gift for anything physical he was a talented painter.  He could really make with the oils and the brushes.  He could paint anything.  Several art galleries showed his paintings.  He had had many exhibitons.

I found this left brain/right brain thing amazing.  How many guys do you know who are Golden Gloves boxers and can also dash off a vase of flowers or a Colorado sunset- with horse?  I can’t box and I can’t paint.  So I tip my hat.

Back to my brother and sister-in-law’s winter getaway place…  It was the perfect second home for them (and their occasional house guest- me.)  Beautifully done, comfy beds, great proximity to all kinds of fun, cozy, warm- all in wonderful desert colors.

We were wowed and I wanted to bestow upon it a heck of a housewarming gift.

To that end, Mary Lu and I went cruising the Scottsdale art gallery scene and then I saw it. It was a painting of a Native American brave riding his horse towards the viewer.  A background sunset of glowing hot orange was burning away behind him. (I can not describe art.  You’re just going to have to trust me on this.) It would look awesome hung over their new fireplace.

After a brief conference with Mary Lu- who loved it and agreed that it would grace their house perfectly- I looked at the price tag.  Gulp.  It was pricey.  But a solution was reached.  We went halfsies.

Mary Lu and I were both beaming as we schlepped it home.  It was gorgeous- all pink and red and orange in the twilight of the desert afternoon.

Much too soon it was time for Mike and I to bid adios to Don and Charlie’s and Mastro’s and Pishke’s Paradise and the Teepee- and oh yeah- our landlords. We headed back to our mountain house.  (Nothing too shabby with this scenery, btw. I aways say Colorado is where God goes on His vacation.)

I was glad to be home but it had been fun and I missed Kenny and Mary Lu already.

“It was great, wasn’t it?” I wistfully sighed as we were unpacking.

“Yeah,” Mike agreed.  “I loved the desert and Kenny and Mary Lu are wonderful hosts.”

“And wasn’t that the perfect housewarming gift?  How good did that painting look in their living room?  It was a knockout, don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said my resident art expert.  “You really liked that painting, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I ruefully admitted.  “I loved it.  And it would have looked just as good here.  But you know, there was only one in the gallery, it was very expensive, and besides, it was their housewarming.”

Mike’s shamrock green eyes took on a wicked gleam. “You like that painting?” he asked again.  “You want one?”

(Did I happen to mention that among his many talents, Mike is a diabolically clever forger?)

So that’s how Mary Lu and Kenny’s new Arizona house and my old Colorado one got the same housewarming gift.

And today I wish my brother and sister-in-law lots of bread and salt and love and laughter in their beautiful, new apartment.

And Mike can make a copy of that picture any time he likes.

For all of us.

Happy 2013 everyone.