Stick a Cork in Me

Try not to judge

Every annual appointment, my doctor asks me if I have hobbies. I guess it’s important to our overall health. My answers never quite fit. Cooking? No, that’s more of an essential chore. Writing? No, that’s my profession.

“Do you collect anything?” she asked.

“CORKS!” I yelled.

She sat up straighter on her stool, likely due to my enthusiasm.

“Maybe we need to check your liver enzymes,” she said as she wrote up my blood test order.

As an Italian, wine is part of my food pyramid. Growing up, my family cooked with it almost daily, even though they only drank it socially. It was never high-end—just your basic Chianti that came in those straw-decorated decanters you later stuck a red candle in and used as a centerpiece on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth.

Later in life, when I married a man who collected wine, I started saving the corks. If we drank a pricey wine for a special occasion like an anniversary or a promotion, I’d write on the cork to remember the wine and the event. As our cellar grew, so did our wine-tasting parties. The first one, in North Hollywood, called NoHo Wine Club, met monthly because all four of us were local and loved visiting wineries in Santa Ynez, Paso Robles, and Napa.

Over the years, the club’s name changed as we moved to the suburbs to start a family. We only got together about 4 times a year, and now we were The Four Seasons Wine Club. These tastings, along with wine with dinner, supported my cork collecting. I had bowls, vases, and baskets full of corks.

When my son was in preschool, the teacher sent home a wish list of arts-and-crafts items, like paper towel holders, egg cartons, and coffee cans. When I saw corks on the list, I was excited! Finally! My corks served a purpose! I knew I could use them to make a cork wreath or a trivet, but I only had time to accumulate these corks, not enough time to do anything with them.

I emptied all my cork holdings into two Trader Joe’s paper bags and happily walked into the preschool, handing them off to my son’s teacher. Her eyes popped out of her head, similar to the corks being born from my many bottles. Oh, shit. Is she about to report me to Child Services? I wondered. I started explaining that we were collectors and had a wine cellar. We were part of a robust wine club. These were corks collected over a five-year span! She tentatively took the two bags and stared at my son, I guess to make sure he wasn’t missing his lunch box or shoes.

Even with giving away all those corks, my collection built up once again. In kindergarten, my son had a playdate, and when they got tired of Legos, he decided to play with a basket of corks, throwing them at each other. They were light, so I didn’t think much of it until they poured the entire basket on top of the friend’s mother’s head from the top of the stairs when she came to pick up her son. After that, play dates were at her house.

The corks were also practical. When my son started doing math, and I was of no help, we used corks as visual aids to solve problems while lining them up on the table. It worked! We figured out how long it took a train leaving the station traveling at a certain MPH to reach its destination.

Today, I continue to collect my corks, but they aren’t as invasive. I blame that on acid reflux and cutting back on my wine-pairing habit. Still, my corks bring back memories I don’t want to forget, and at some point, corks may be obsolete. More and more wineries are opting for screw caps; corks could become more of a novelty, like bottle caps, restaurant matches, and other things that have gone to the wayside because of a more practical alternative.

Maybe before the holidays approach next year, I’ll find time to build a cork Christmas tree or a few cork reindeer, or maybe I’ll just save them for future grandkids who can throw them on top of unassuming visitors just for the fun of it. They are harmless, after all—in moderation.

Andrea Tate is an essayist and writing professor at Antioch University, where she teaches Writing and Publishing in the Individual Master of Arts program. Andrea’s published essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Manifest Station, and more. Originally from New York, Andrea now lives in Southern California with her family and their 100-pound shepherd, Brody Bo Beau. To learn more about Andrea, visit her website at andreatate.net.