Changing life now & fuzzy navels

My mother and I never shared a glass of wine. Could that even be possible? But it was. My mother rarely drank and when she did, it was fuzzy navels.

Ten years ago, I met a woman who had just arrived in town from New York City. We found an hour to meet at 7 Monks for a drink. I was intrigued by her big laugh, her big hair and her loud, lovable personality.

Our worlds couldn’t have been more different. I wanted to hear about the Big Apple. She wanted to figure out how to leave the city behind and move to quiet Traverse City. Two brand new friends, a tentative start.

The night was going well - until I ordered a fuzzy navel. And she roared with disbelief.

Roared.

“Fuzzy navels, do they make those anymore?” she was squealing with delight.

She, herself, had just ordered a martini so difficult that I wondered if the waitress thought she was kidding. She was not.

I looked at her, and replied, without thinking and without defense: “It was my mother’s favorite drink.”

She stopped, sobered.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “It’s the only thing to order.”

There was a quiet moment then, one in which the friendship could have gone either way. It was a test... but one we passed. Because we fell into laughter, so hard and so long, that we cried. We were polar opposites, truly. And it was a delight.

But that moment - I will never forget.

Because it had never occurred to me to order anything but a fuzzy navel. And there it was again: my loss. Just when I thought I had upended it all.

The fuzzy navel was a picture of my life with my mother – simple, sweet, barely intoxicating. An even road, smooth, safe, predictable. Everything had been so easy with her. No bumps. No arguments. No upsets.

And there I sat, years after she was gone, trying to stay the course.

It was a gift, really, that Tami said anything at all to me.

First - it showed me how much of my mother I carried with me, which I cherished.

Second? It freed me.

From that night forward, I looked at drink menus with interest. I began to try them all. I sampled drinks mixed with vodka or whiskey or bourbon. I ordered drinks with plastic alligators and colorful birds perched on the rim. I marveled over shades of red, white and blue served in tall curvy glasses on the Fourth of July.

Awful, strong drinks, one after another, that I drank down with glee.

And it was what I needed. A change in perspective, a forward momentum, a positive change. That life could still be good. That changing my life without her, didn’t change the life I’d had with her.

The shift started happening everywhere.

I met new people, people who had never met my mother. I went new places, places my mother had never heard of. I biked and ran and wrote and worked on new projects, all things my mother would never see.

And every new experience was proof, a little something, that I was going to make it. That life changed and, when it did, I could, too. With joy.

(And yes that's a fuzzy navel in the picture, over a campfire at Interlochen State Park two summers ago. I must always and will forevermore, only drink fuzzy navels with Tami.)