Lambrusco, Loss, & Passing
We’re all passing in some way, but what happens when you just can’t?
Anne Marie is dead. That’s what the text said. As much as it was a shock, it wasn’t. As Joan Didion once wrote, “In the jingle-jangle of that summer, it made as much sense as anything else.”
The notice came via text. That, too, made as much sense as it didn’t: Anne Marie Is Dead!!!! I sat at the edge of the bed in a kind of trance, tears flowing like blood. The last I heard of Anne Marie, she was missing somewhere on the beach. I imagined that she found her village there among the sumptuous Miami waves, that the sadness that had seeped into our baby girl, Anne Marie, would be replaced with that mischievous smile that I always felt held secrets, secrets folk are often born with but never speak of.
Anne Marie was my cousin, but she was more like a little sister. When she arrived here in The United States from Clarendon, Jamaica, I was living in New York, working them wine streets—hustling, learning, sipping, attending (and sneaking into) every wine tasting event possible. Those were the days of “typicity”—right bank Bordeaux’s taste like this, left bank Bordeaux’s tastes like that.
My journey in the study began at a critical time in wine history in The United States. I remember reading a column Matt Kramer wrote about the “democratization of wine.” I don’t know if it was a democracy as much as it was a declaration of independence. If you had $10 to spend on a bottle, suddenly you were able to participate in the sip. People felt fine and sexy sipping on that shiraz they bought at 7-11. Yellowtail gave to the people what Hip-Hop gave to the streets—a platform to be accepted and seen, and it didn’t matter if the The Citizens of La Tâche and Screaming Eagle didn’t see you. Nobody cared.
Well, I still cared as I drank Yellowtail and the other wines that were starting to hold space in my memory. Sipping Ken Wright Cellar pinot noir, 2001 vintage. I can’t remember which estate but somewhere there are several journal entries about this wine.
Like life, studying wine can be chaotic especially if you are preoccupied with what people think about what you’re sipping more than the wine. I’m not sure that will ever change. Sometimes, I think about how much our preoccupation with what people think about us eat years from our lives.
The season of wine is breathing new life into old conversations. Democratization? Liberation? I recognize a similar vibe and shift as chillable reds and talks of “natural” wine become more mainstream. It’s the clash of anti-typicity and trend, pretending not to care what people think about what you’re drinking and caring so much about what people think about you’re drinking, you ask the somm for the funkiest wine on the shelf though you’re not sure what that means.
We’re all performing on some level—a point so skillfully and beautifully captured in director Rebecca Hall’s black and white film adaptation of author Nella Larsen’s 1929 book, Passing. I had to watch the film a few times not because I didn’t like it but because I was drawn to it. It wasn’t the banal good versus bad, wrong versus right discussion. It was feeling the chill of Claire, the protagonist’s duality, the way she seem to slither through the black and white, mysteriously yet with raging presence. I initially thought of Claire as an over-chilled, delicious Champagne but each time I watched it, she warmed up until she became a savory, deep-red Lambrusco.
We’re all passing in some way or at least, trying to. In the book, Clare is passing as white at the highest cost of a deep, gnawing need to be in her blackness. I wish that my cousin Anne Marie understood that we’re all trying to pass—pass as straight, pass as a moral, pass as all-knowing, pass as indefatigable. She was born with a mind that naturally wired towards formal academia and felt the pressure many first generation Americans born to Jamaican families feel.
So when she got pregnant in her first semester in college, the shame was bright, awesome, and so bloody became her soul. Her household didn’t understand postpartum depression. She didn’t. We didn’t. As a family, our elders taught us to work, to keep moving, to keep forging forward, climbing up mountains no matter how much the sun burned. You kept climbing. You had no choice. Taking time to contemplate weariness for the weak and unambitious.
Anne Marie and I never sipped wine together, but we talked. We talked a lot. Who will weep for the young, black mother when the rainbows are not enough? I hoped her son’s life—his presence, his possibilities, his newness would save her. I hoped someday our conversations would become less dismal, less final. I hoped one day that shared Lambrusco bottle moment would come.
In so many ways, Anne Marie story is the wine story being told right now. Free the palate. Folks want to feel free in their palates. I’m not saying that those haunting spaces with prudish, unfriendly wine-types don’t exist anymore. They do even in the natural wine space. But in the hysteria of conventional versus natural, can versus bottle, lawyer versus digital nomad-affiliate marketer, there is a liberation song. There are spaces forming, communities forming where people are sipping—uniquely, freely, lovely.
The last I heard of Anne Marie before she died, she was missing. A part of me hoped that she, who once wanted to be a MTV VJ (quietly, quietly) instead of the attorney family members said she should be had found her tribe, a musical tribe, that she was the VJ she wanted be on the beach in her paradise-oblivion far away from the judgement and criticism and shame.
I drank Paltrinieri Lambrusco the evening I found out about Anne Marie’s death. It’s dark and savory with notes of blackberries, African violets, black olives, black cardamom, and a hint of prune preserves. Makes me think of drumming circles and rejoicing ancestors.
I’m not clear on how exactly Anne Marie died. I have chosen to not know and just imagine her stepping into the spirit world feeling a depth of freedom none of us can imagine. No Lambrusco, but perhaps white rum pouring from the clouds, an elder reaching out her arms, “You are loved.”
I dedicate this Sipping Lovely post to my beautiful cousin Anne Marie who died from complications related to postpartum depression and schizophrenia.
Love you Dink and I’m so sorry for your loss. In Pittsburgh tonight and drinking Lambrusco with you.
Think of one special thing about Anne Marie, and carry that with you always. She will always be remembered. Condolences for your loss. Blessings.🙏🏿