Broken Trust

I think I told you all about my trip to the fancy hacienda about a month ago, the one that ended with us having to pull the van over to let a woman get out and get sick after a few margaritas.  While I relished telling you her story, I kind of forgot to tell you about my own faux paux.  That's the truth, I really did forget.

But I remember now.   The whole group was sitting out on the back terrace with the owner, we had been told that we would have lunch at 11:30 but now it was almost 2:30 and we still hadn't eaten, and worse, there had been no water offered since we arrived there two hours earlier.  Walking around a bamboo hacienda under the Yucatecan sun is thirsty work and it was no wonder that when the group was finally served something to drink, they guzzled it down, and it's no wonder, with nothing to eat or drink since early that morning, that they caught quite a quick buzz.

Me, with my rumless punch in hand, did not suffer these consequences.  An older man was sitting next to me and after two margaritas he decided it was necessito that he find the bano.  To get there, he had to work his way through the narrow passage between the couch we were sitting on and the table that held a wine glass that was precariously positioned on the corner of the table under which lay a big black lab that the man also had to step over.  It was quite an obstacle course, and the older man was probably not all that steady on his feet when he wasn't drinking, after two killer margaritas he was positively wobbly. I held my breath as I watched him make his way past the wine glass.

Whew! He made it. He even bent down to scratch the dog's head.

Now it was my turn because my own rumless punches had found their way to my 50 year old bladder and I was a little afraid that one of the drunks might do something to make me giggle and we know what happens to 50 year old bladders when we giggle.  They don't hold.

I gingerly made my way down the narrow passage and over the dog, I thought I was in the clear, so I swung to the left in the direction of the banos.  Crash!  The damn wine glass crashes to the stone floor and breaks into a million little pieces (Thank you James Frey).

My damn bag caught it when I swung left.

I was so embarrassed, but the owner quickly reassured me that it happened all the time and not to worry and, hell, he owns a freakin' hacienda, he sure wasn't going to miss one little wine glass.  He told me to forget it and I did.

If I had been one of my fellow guests who had had a couple of magaritas, I'd still be carrying the memory of that broken glass with me and it's jagged little pieces would still be cutting me every time I thought about that trip. That trip would have become all about that broken wine glass.

But because I wasn't drinking, I could let it go.  It was an accident.

I only remembered that incident today because I broke something much more fragile, something irreplaceable.  I broke someone's trust.  Just like that broken wine glass, it was a total accident, a momentary lapse of thought.  Absence of thought.  I didn't take the care I should have, I didn't protect it as I should have.

My one small comfort is that I wasn't drinking.

This is the season when many relationships are fractured, some are destroyed.  All it takes is a careless word swung the wrong way.  We think that booze makes us braver, smarter, wittier but all it does is take away our control.  It causes lapses. Lapses of judgement.  Lapses of thought. Lapses of care. I'd like to take up SoberMomRock's call, Just Put Down The Glass, for this season, give yourself the peace of knowing that nothing or no one was broken or destroyed because you were drinking.