So get this. My new roommate Schwinng made a cake for me and the friends who helped me move on Saturday. A cake. With fresh strawberries and powdered sugar. Bearbait and I grabbed three muscular sober boys after a meeting and we got it done in two and a half hours, and later we sat around the dining room table eating cake. I kid you not. Then the next morning (my first in the house; heavenly) he and I sat at the table reading the Sunday paper with coffee, and he asked me if I wanted an omelet. What, like I don’t want an omelet?

Within three days I had the Studly Couple, the Tattooed Monk, and my new friend Smart-Ass (you can take it) over to see the place. The Monk put it best as he looked around my bedroom and said “You have a home now.”

After they had all left, Schwinng asked, “Where do you meet all these nice, well-mannered men?”

I should have said “At my bible study class. Which reminds me, have you found Jesus?” That would have been good. Instead I told the truth. “AA”, I said.

Some other blogger lists as one of his pet peeves, “Recovery stories”. I’m not going to link to him because a) I can’t remember who he is and b) I’m pissy that way. It’s easy sometimes, in the company of good friends, to forget what’s at stake in sobriety. This past weekend Bearbait and I heard some news about another one of his sponsees who had checked himself into a treatment center for the third time. On July 5th, he swallowed a fistful of pills and downed a bottle of something and eventually his esophagus exploded and he drowned in his own fluids.

And this is what happens in “recovery”: people die, people drink, people disappear. And each time it happens we are reminded of the stakes, of the work needed to survive. And each time it happens I scan my life for flaws, and instead find it full of people I love, people who make me laugh, people who know the dark corners of my soul.

I wish for everyone a home like mine, but I especially wish it for the people I love.