One more day one day at a time

FRANK MIELE

My best friend, Mike M., turns 60 today, which would surprise anyone who knew him when he was 30. He wasn't supposed to live this long.

But Mike is nothing if not surprising.

People who know both of us are always surprised that we are best friends because they think we don't have anything in common.

What they mean is that we don't have anything in common politically, and they are right about that, I guess, at least not for the past few years. But what they don't know is that politics is not the most important thing in our lives - acceptance is.

I learned that 23 years ago the hard way - by being forced by Mike to read daily meditations out of a Hazelden sobriety book before I could have my first drink of the day during happy hour. If you think that is weird, then you don't know Mike.

Yeah, today he is my best friend, but when I first met him in 1984, he was just the bartender who was trying to sober me up. As Kris Kristofferson said about Johnny Cash, "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction."

Mike was 37 then, and had only been sober for about a year. I was 29, and felt the same way about sobriety that I felt about God. I knew it probably existed, but I wasn't sure where to find it, or even whether I wanted to.

By that time, Mike knew where both were, and he had that cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile every time he poured me another Jim Beam and Coke with an irony chaser: "Here ya go, buddy. This'll fix yer life up and take away all yer problems."

Chances are I didn't get the irony, but I needed the Jim Beam enough that I would swallow anything to get it, even the annoying witticisms of a sober bartender.

I tried to avoid him for a while, and even did a 180 some nights when I saw he was working behind the bar. But in those days, First Avenue West wasn't just a street; it was also the name of the best bar in town, and when you got through with work, that was where you headed if you were the kind of person that needed a drink after work.

I was the kind of a person who needed a drink after work, so I kept coming back. I came back so often that I eventually found out that Mike and I actually had a lot in common. For one thing, he had read all the same famous books as me, except he had actually read them. For another, he didn't want to sober up any more than I did; it was just that God had made him an offer he couldn't refuse: If you stop drinking, I will let you live.

Mike did the same thing with me, except his offer was a little different.

He'd pull out that Hazelden book of meditations and throw it down on the bar when I came in. Read the meditation, and you'll get your drink. So I'd turn to the page with today's meditation on it and read it, aloud if Mike had time to listen or to myself if he was too busy pouring drinks.

"So what's it mean?" I'd ask, but he'd always turn it back on me, using the Socratic method to try to get me to hang myself: "How the heck should I know? What's it mean to you?"

I'd talk about this and that, using my great intellect and understanding to avoid the issue at hand until finally Mike put his foot up on the ice chest behind the bar, put his elbow on his knee, his hand on his chin, pulled the toothpick out of his mouth, and pronounced, with all the mock solemnity of Jed Clampett talking about cousin Jethro: "PUH-thetic, jusssst PUH-thetic."

And eventually when I stopped laughing, I had to go ahead and tell him the meaning of life, and it turned out that acceptance was the answer to all my problems today.

It has been the answer for more than 22 years now, one day at a time, thanks to a bartender who didn't care if I drank or not, but wanted me to know that I had a choice.

Thanks, Mike, and happy birthday.