With salt or without. →[More:]

I just saw a commercial for Jose Cuervo -- "The best margaritas are made with Jose Cuervo" -- and it triggered a memory of my brother and birth mother. They were living together at the time, my brother and his wife and daughter, and my mother, trying to save money with one rent instead of two, and I was visiting, and my brother had this blender and talked about how now and then he liked to make strawberry margaritas, and he and my mother both laughed. "They're good," she said.

It was such a quick flash of memory. I could see them in the kitchen. The look they gave each other. This pressed lipped, playfully disapproving look my mother had. Then I remembered they're both dead. My mother about ten years now and my brother just last year, at age 49. His wife said he came in, sat down, and just said he wasn't feeling well, and by the time the ambulance got him to the hospital, he was gone.

Such a strange sensation, that sudden drop in mood, like an elevator falling. Fucking Cuervo. The commercial showed this circle of margaritas, short glasses rimmed with salt. I also remember thinking it'd be better with Herradura.