Is This All There Is?

It was a weekday night early in my recovery. I had come home from a day at work without the large bottles of wine, the kind with caps and no cork, that I used to load up on at the liquor supermarket in order to drink myself into unconsciousness. My wife was home, and we had a quiet, modest dinner. If there was a question mark next to the marriage, at least I wasn't tearing the loft apart in the drunken rages that marked my active years. I was a year and a half into recovery and progressing nicely, I thought. In fact, I was more than halfway through the Ninth Step, as I understood the Ninth Step to be at the time.