Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times by Suzan Colón Read Free Book Online

you can drink for free from the tap? (Just remember to boil it first.)
    Bottled water is expensive, not to mention taxing on the planet, what with the fuel to ship it and the plasticto recycle. But we use it because the tap water where we live is questionable.
    For Nathan, there is no question. “Don’t drink that!” he says if he sees me filling anything from the sink besides the plant watering can. At first I thought he was just being paranoid. We’re both native New Yorkers who grew up drinking top-rated tap water and ridiculing everything about New Jersey—until we had to move here after we got priced out of our hometown. Now we boast about our quiet, friendly neighborhood and our cheap, roomy apartment to harried Manhattanites who fret about their living expenses but ask, “How do you even
get
to New Jersey?”
    Aside from being the more practical of the two of us, the one who looks before he leaps and sniffs before he drinks, Nathan has lived here longer than I have. He knows that after heavy rains our tap water needs to be boiled due to flooded sewers.
    “Can we filter the water?” I asked.
    Nathan shook his head. “It’ll probably dissolve the filter.”
    Now that I’m home, I’m going through a lot of bottled water. I’m one of those people who believes in drinking eight glasses a day, even though I couldn’tfind a source for that prescription or any evidence to back it up when I researched it for a magazine article. Still, I’m thirsty, and I’m going through our three-gallon jugs of pure mountain spring water too quickly.
    It occurs to me one day that we drink our questionable water in tea and coffee—once it’s boiled, it’s fine. But there’s only so much tea I can drink, so when it starts getting cold in the house, I have an idea that kills two birds with one stone: I start drinking boiled tap water to quench my thirst and stay warm. I add a little lemon to mask its taste (which decent water usually doesn’t have) and hope that the citrus will kill whatever the high temperatures don’t. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find any research to prove that, either.
    Nathan finds all of this disturbing, and, of course, illogical. “How much water could you possibly need? And if you’re cold, why don’t you just turn on the heat?” he asks.
    “Are you crazy?” I say, perhaps a little harshly. But he knows I’m a thin-blooded person; if I turned up the heat every time I got cold, we’d be living in a tent in the parking space where our truck used to be.
    • • •
    #4: Save money on gas, parking, and insurance: Get rid of your vehicle
.
    Four years ago, when Nathan and I were supposed to go on our first date, I was on a fierce deadline. I had a choice of either rescheduling or going to dinner with him and returning to the office afterward to work until midnight. The last time I’d seen Nathan was a week prior, when we’d just returned from the Costa Rican yoga retreat where we’d met. We talked and held hands for the duration of the five-hour flight home. I thought about his quick smile and how easy and good it felt to be with him, and I remembered his handsome face and the sweetness that seemed to radiate from him like a light.
    All of these things were the same when we met for dinner the night of my deadline.
    “I’ll drive you home,” he said at the end of an evening of more easy conversation and hand-holding.
    “Actually, I have to go back to work,” I said. “We’re shipping tonight, and I have pages to read.”
    “Well then, I’ll drive you to the office.”
    He led me to a truck the color of a ripe cherry. He opened the passenger side door for me, and I had to hoist myself up into the cab. The interior was clean,the seats big. A Tweety Bird air freshener hung from the gearshift. The truck was like him: strong, sexy, but with a sense of humor. Nathan drove me back to the office, and we made out like teenagers in the front seat before I went up to the office with blushing