brilligspoons | There's distance and there's silence

therealljidol Week 6: Food Memory

It's force of habit at this point, so I do it despite Bella yelling at me that I'm making it wrong.

First, I lay out the two slices of bread on a paper towel, bottom edge to bottom edge but not touching. I take two knives out from the drawer, then go into the pantry and retrieve the peanut butter container, and then I take the jar of strawberry preserves out from the refrigerator. I place both next to the bread. I pick the peanut butter up first, open it, take one of the knives and dig it in deep to get a nicely sized glob. I spread it over one slice of bread, and then repeat the action for the other.

"That's not how Mommy makes it," Bella complains.

"No," I say to her, "but it's the way Papa taught me."

I set the peanut butter aside, and then I lick both sides of the dirty knife. Mom used to scold me for this, tell me that I was going to cut my tongue open, and then where I would be? But I'm careful, I repeat this in my head even as Bella scrunches her nose up at me, I've done this a million times, it's fine. I put that knife in the sink once I'm done with it, and then I open up the jar of preserves. I take the clean knife and dip it in, careful to only pick up one of the whole strawberries in the jar. I spread that on top of the peanut butter on one slice, and then I lick that knife, too, before placing it in the sink with its match.

"That's not enough jelly," she says.

"It's plenty. Any more and it'll drip out between the bread."

I take the peanut butter-only slice and place it carefully on top of the one with the jelly, and then I slide it around until the edges align perfectly and wipe the excess peanut butter off with a finger. Bella waits until I've rinsed the knives off and put them back in the drawer to ask me more questions.

"When did Papa teach you that?"

I pick the sandwich up and bite into it. I close my eyes. "I was as old as you are," I tell her. "I kept complaining to Mommy - my mommy, your Mama - that the jelly was soaking through the bread before I even got to lunchtime at school." I hold the sandwich out to Bella for her to rip a section off. "She told me that if I was going to complain, I had to make my own. I went through a lot of bread and got so frustrated with the whole thing that I broke down and went to Papa, and he helped me out. I've never made it any other way since."

I take another bite, and I remember the roughness of his hands as he taught me to glide the knife over the bread gently and without tearing it, the amusement in his voice as he explained the superiority of strawberry preserves to grape jelly, and the mock-stern warning when he told me not to take all the strawberries before he'd had his toast on Sunday morning.

Bella holds out her hand for more of the sandwich. "You still make it weird," she says.

"You come from a family of weird people, sweetie," I say. "Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches are the least of your problems."