Doing Shots for My Mother

I am a saloonkeeper’s daughter. It was the saloon or the tavern. If you were ever there, you would never have called it a bar. My mother and father had a deal about the saloon. She ran the family. He ran the tavern. He didn’t paint the bedroom. She didn’t tend bar.

My parents were the two smartest people I’ve ever met. They taught me everything I know about love and about strength. They also taught me how people think.

I’m not sure why my mom and I were at the saloon that day. I was home from college. We must have been meeting my brother. He must have been in town to visit. That seems to be the only reason we ever ended up at the tavern together once I was in college—someone was visiting and the tavern was on the itinerary. My dad made the best pizza in town and it was an easy place to meet and greet, a second-home to everybody.

I was about 20. That made my mom 53. She sat to my left. Some old guy was to my right. Funny how the video replay focuses in on a detail of an important memory, and the rest of the picture fades so completely from sight. I have no idea what that guy looked like. I keep thinking of green work clothes and plaid, but I don't know why.

We sat on those chrome-legged, round bar stools with the red-leather seats. The retro ones that weren’t retro back then. It was a bright afternoon, dark in the bar, and the little Christmas lights were on. The little Christmas lights were always on. That’s part of what made it a saloon.

I have no idea what we were talking about-my mom and me. What do mothers and college kids talk about? I’m a mom of a college kid and I still can’t explain what that kind of talking is. We talk about meaningful nothings. It's like learning conversation all over again. It's mother-son, friend-to-friend, how'd-you-know-that, whoops-there-I-go-again talking.

At some point the old guy next to me leaned in and interrupted.

“Daisy,” he said. All of the men said it the same way Day-zee. She’d been called that since she was thirteen. Someone once addressed a letter to Daisy, Ottawa, Illinois, and it was delivered to her. In a town of 20,000 people that seems like something.

“Introduce me to your daughter,” he slurred.

My mother obliged him. It was my father’s saloon.

I said, “Nice to meet you.”

He decided to buy us both a drink. The bartender came. I asked for a Coke.

“A shot of Jack Daniels,” said my mother. I barely managed to stay on my stool.

The old guy next to me . . . (I’m not kidding he had to be at least 40.) . . . went to the GENTS shortly thereafter. Which gave me a chance to talk to my mother. This shot was a curious thing.

“I’ve seen you drink whiskey on holidays at home. I’ve seen you have mixed drinks in restaurants. I’ve even seen you drink moonshine from a porcelain cup with Aunt Teena in her kitchen in Arkansas. But I’ve never seen you do a shot before. When did you start doing shots?”

My mother looked back with a smile I now own. I could tell she was about to teach me.

“Never turn down a drink,” she said, lifting the shot. She held it up before me. “A shot goes down easy—like this.” With a soft turn of her wrist, she dumped the drink on the floor. “Can’t leave 50 cents on the table. I am the saloonkeeper’s wife after all.”

So whenever a jerk in a bar offers to buy me a drink, I seldom refuse him.

Instead I might say, “Thank you. My mother said never to turn down a drink. I’d be glad to have a shot in her honor—the way she taught me to.”

If he asks what I do for a living, I say I'm a saloonkeeper's daughter.

—me strauss Letting me be