Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates the Mexican Army's important victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862. In the United States, the holiday has become a celebration of Mexican American culture.
In honor of the holiday, my favorite local vegan restaurant was having a special promotion (curbside pick-up only), so I of course had to order for myself and Sarah (dropped hers off on my way home), getting each of us the Taco Trio, Classic Esquites (Mexican corn cups), and a churro donut:
Some of you know I come from a long line of alcoholics, so there is a genetic predisposition in my family to overimbibe. I have had my struggles in the past, went for a year without, then decided I did not have a problem. I still keep all the warning signs in my head though, one of which is drinking alone. My husband *might* have a glass of sangria or a strawberry daiquiri every blue moon (pun totally intended... ;-) but, with my formerly-active calendar of concerts and dinners with friends, I was definitely a social drinker, never having more than two (beers or glasses of wine, rarely hard alcohol) but on a regular basis. So, it's now been almost two months of chosen sobriety. I enjoyed it to "loosen up", but I don't need it.
I laugh that the trend now is to do Virtual Happy Hours, and my one weekly Zoom call is at 11 a.m. I joked to N and J that maybe one time we could have mimosas or Bloody Marys? It's okay, though. There just doesn't seem reason enough right now to break my stride, or streak, and I may one day randomly decide, and that will be okay, too... :-)
P.S. For the record, I have not had tequila since June 1976, hosting a party the evening of the day I took my last college final exam, having bought a gallon of "the meanest Mexican spirits" (see poem below). Come at 7 p.m., I said. At 7 p.m. I started drinking. The last thing I remember is someone going out for more lemons (it was still daylight), and I woke up hours later with a lump on the back of my head (I had apparently fallen off the front porch), wearing different clothes (after throwing up; thanks to my college roomie Linda for changing me!), and many passed-out peeps throughout the entirety of my house. Great celebration (ha!) and, to this day, I cannot smell the stuff without gagging.
SONG: Tequila by The Champs
BOOK: Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel
POEM: Cinco de Mayo by Luis J. Rodriguez
Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people,
those whose land is starved of blood,
civilizations which are no longer
holders of the night. We reconquer with our feet,
with our tongues, that dangerous language,
saying more of this world than the volumes
of textured and controlled words on a page.
We are the gentle rage; our hands hold
the stream of the earth, the flowers
of dead cities, the green of butterfly wings.
Cinco de Mayo is about the barefoot, the untooled,
the warriors of want who took on the greatest army
Europe ever mustered—and won.
I once saw a Mexican man stretched across
an upturned sidewalk
near Chicago's 18th and Bishop one fifth of May day.
He brought up a near-empty bottle
to the withering sky and yelled out a grito
with the words: ¡Que viva Cinco de Mayo!
And I knew then what it meant—
what it meant for barefoot Zapoteca indigenas
in the Battle of Puebla and what it meant for me
there on 18th Street among los ancianos,
the moon-faced children and futureless youth
dodging the gunfire and careening battered cars,
and it brought me to that war
that never ends, the war Cinco de Mayo
was a battle of, that I keep fighting,
that we keep bleeding for, that war
against a servitude that a compa
on 18th Street knew all about
as he crawled inside a bottle of the meanest
Mexican spirits.
QUOTE: "I can think of many reasonable excuses for needing a cocktail, but Cinco De Mayo is always a no-brainer." ~ Rachel Hollis
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