“Let’s go get a margarita before we go to the emergency room.” Mike looked at me like I’d completely lost it. He knew better than to say anything out loud, but his face said it all.
I’d been having a gradually expanding pain in my lower abdomen. Not debilitating, but not decreasing. We were now on day three.
Yet it was one of my favorite days of the year. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving. A time when corporate America puts work to bed. A time when the kids were at school. A time when Mike and I would go out to lunch with no phones buzzing, no HR disasters, no demands. Instead, we’d stroll around the outdoor mall, hand holding, laughing, talking about something besides work.
That day always felt like it had slipped through a wormhole and was in a different universe, so the rest of life couldn’t encroach and steal our peace.
“Okay,” Mike said, because he was an expert at Sue management, especially at my most belligerent. “How about we go to the emergency room first, and if they tell us it’s nothing, we’ll go get margaritas after.”
I agreed.
We had “our” emergency room — a tiny satellite location near the house. We’d been there for stitches, pneumonia, a broken foot. It was always a quick in-and-out. I had faith it would be again. I probably just needed a painkiller prescription, and then we’d be on our way. Bonus: it was five minutes away from Uncle Julio’s, our tex mex joint of choice.
The kind nurse took my vitals, then handed me a hospital gown. The orderly wheeled me in for a CT scan. I mentioned to both “hoping to get out of here in time for a margarita!” They looked at me the way Mike had.
I’d just received the best of all emergency room perks — a just-out-of-the-heater warm blanket — when the doctor came back in.
“Sorry Mrs. Deagle, no margaritas today. You have appendicitis. We’re sending you to the main hospital for surgery tonight.”
Tonight?
Sure enough, ten hours later I came home without my appendix, sleeping away Thanksgiving Day on the couch.
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A lot has changed since that annual Margarita Wednesday tradition (and the one year it was RUDELY interrupted by abdominal surgery).
Mike died. I left my corporate job, giving up my overflowing inbox and buzzing phone. The kids grew up, so I’m not beholden to their school and activity schedules. In other words, every single structural element that made that Margarita Wednesday special has evolved or disappeared. And yet, every single Thanksgiving week, without fail, I get the same wormhole feeling. The feeling of sweet, sweet space.
I’ve been taking long walks around my neighborhood this week. It’s a ghost town, tumbleweeds practically blowing through the streets. Everyone is gone, visiting family and friends. My email influx has slowed to a trickle (though I’m pretty sure my spam folder is overflowing with Black Friday deals.) As the light fades around 4pm, I find myself picking up a book I bought in January but never got around to reading. My son Connor is home from Denver, and we spend every evening on the sectional watching football, a Marvel movie, Top Gear.
There are some traditions we have purposefully laid to rest as our family has changed — we canceled Father’s Day in 2017, we now go to my mom’s for Thanksgiving Dinner rather than hosting, we celebrated our last Christmas in Colorado last year. But some traditions you want to keep around, even while it seems like life is pulling away from them.
I’m glad to know that while a tradition may change shape — I drank zero margarita’s this past Wednesday — the essence can remain.
Looking back, it strikes me that I never got too hung up on the particulars of the tradition. (Margaritas or meltdown!!) It makes sense, because Mike’s death catapulted me into full ADAPT-TO-SURVIVE mode. So for each birthday, holiday, vacation, I was much more focused on recreating the feeling that meant so much to me and the kids, without giving a damn what that looked like. Which explains why every Wednesday before Thanksgiving for the last few years has looked different. One year I went to an esoteric artsy movie. Another year, a special exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. And another, a long and lazy lap swim in the pool.
Maybe that’s a silver lining of things changing before we’re ready for them to. Before we are ‘prepared’. I never got a chance to be mad that my Mall-and-Margarita tradition wasn’t bringing me the same satisfaction. If I wanted to feel that crystalline pause feeling, I had to look within and figure out what would bring me that, considering who I was and what I was craving today.
No matter how external circumstances change, we always have access to internal states, aka feelings. Feeling good might look different now or require different ingredients, but it’s still possible. We just have to have to think outside the tradition box, or in this case, the margarita glass.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours,
Sue
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