Ethereal Qualities of the Perfect PB&J

Yes, this is a Mother's Day post, several decades in the making.

The Sunday afternoon nap remains undefeated. More than a little delayed writing this one, but you don’t mind, do you? You’ve got to be pretty invested by now if you read the previous two posts that preceded this one. Maybe you need this more than me 😅

This is the final post in a set of 3 that I planned to write around Mother’s Day this year. I didn’t know what this one would be about until around this time last night. It’s been an interesting journey of spontaneity and healing. Thanks for reading it.

This has truly been a surreal series of events. It has rained both days we’ve been here so far. It was supposed to rain today—78% chance. It held off until just now (11:32 PM CT at time of writing). I got up, went with my dad to sit in on a financial class he’s been teaching at his local church once a week for a few weeks now. I shook hands with a few strangers and hugged a bunch more extended family members. My spirit remembered the fellowship protocols of the elderly, Baptist, Black community here in Birmingham—a far cry from the comparatively self-centered, dysfunctional, and estranged social vibes of South Florida. People here remember you by who your family is/was, so I have been “Otis’ boy” for the past two days. Might sound bad to the uninitiated, so you’ll have to take my word for it that there’s a measure of honor in it.

I promise I’ll tie this back together by the end, but for now, we’re going to take a seemingly bizarre sidebar. I need to tell you about the time my mom and I engineered the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I was in elementary school at the time, and every morning, my mom would pack my lunch. Circa 1997—just before seemingly every child in America began developing peanut allergies. Sadly, I don’t remember what kind of lunchbox I had. I do remember that my mom would always send me to school with a PB&J and other snacks for lunch. It was quick, easy, and healthy enough on wheat bread. More importantly, I loved them. To this day, probably because she made them for me all those years, it remains my favorite little comfort sandwich.

Anyone who’s been an elementary school kid at some point in their life knows that lunch is a pretty big deal. It’s one of the many ways kids (see also: small degenerates) see how they stack up against each other. One innocent yet scathing question: “What’d your mom pack you for lunch?” Coded classism on full display. We would all do our show and tell of our hauls and proceed to carry out trade negotiations where possible, if there was mutual interest from multiple parties. My Clementine for your Dunkaroos? Fat chance, Bueller. I didn’t much bother with the lunch table day traders, usually opting instead to eat whatever my mom had put in the box. But eventually, I would encounter a huge problem with my favorite sandwich.

My mom would make my PB&J like most anyone else. Two slices of bread, peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other, pressed together, and packed in a plastic sandwich bag. Traditional. Simple. Efficient. This presented one glaring issue that I would discover over time, perpetuated by two key factors. First, the amount of time that would pass between the sandwich being packed and the time I was able to eat it at school was about 3 hours. Second, since I was, you know, a literal 6-10-year-old child, I would sling that lunchbox around like a helicopter rotor anytime I went anywhere with it. Centripetal force would wreak havoc on my poor sandwich, not to mention anything else in the lunchbox with it. That, combined with the 3-hour sweat fest in a wooden classroom cubby, meant that when it came time for lunch, the jelly side of the sandwich would have jelly pressed and soaked through the bread, sometimes all the way through to the inside of the plastic bag. You can imagine the looks the lunch table traders would give someone when they pulled out what looked like a murder mystery sandwich, complete with jelly blood.

So one day, I told my mom about this social crisis, and together, we came up with a scientifically proven* method to create the perfect PB&J, which I have been using for nearly 3 decades now.

If you’ve gotten this far and you appreciate a good PB&J from time to time, you will no doubt want to know our secret. Rest assured, I have included it below, but before that, let me tie this sidebar back in.

I came here to Alabama to go to my mother’s gravesite and visit with her for the first time since she passed. That’s not to say I haven’t been to the gravesite at all since she passed, but this is the first time I’ve specifically come to visit. What do I mean by that? Have you ever been to a cemetery and just looked around at the other people there? You can see their emotions radiating off their bodies like heat distortion on a hot day.

Some people radiate duty. They are there to clean, maintain, take the old flowers out, put the new flowers in, and go on about their day.

Others radiate pain. You can see it in their shoulders. How slow and heavy their movements are. They are often alone or accompanied by one other person close to them in age. They’ve come to grieve—to try and dump some of that weight they’ve been carrying.

And there are some people who radiate joy and celebration. They’ve brought the whole family, grandbabies included. These people have brought decorations. Some have set up a picnic. They are smiling, taking photos, laughing, even.

I observed them all at the cemetery today and I could see their feelings clear as day.

I’ve been to this cemetery for duty before. I’ve been there to help my father. Lord knows I’ve been there to grieve. But today, for this impromptu trip, I went there to eat a PB&J with my mom on Mother’s Day.

My dad and my wife, Desinia, were there with me at the cemetery today and I want to thank them both for being there. Desinia immediately agreed to the idea of taking the trip in the first place and she also took the photo of me above. It was also great to just spend some improvised time with my dad, who was more than happy to host us. He and I had spoken about this the day before, but he asked me to share again in the moment, as I stood there eating my sandwich, why I wanted to do this now at this point. So I thought about how to put the words together again, and I told him:

I lost my momma.

I mourned my mother.

And now, I can just hang out with my mom again.

When we lose people we love in this world, it’s so hard because for all of that time, we’ve known and loved them physically. Tangibly. We can see them. Touch them. We can recognize their voice. We can pick up their scent when they walk by. That’s how we’ve come to know them—how we’ve come to understand our connection to them.

When people die, their soul leaves their body. Whether you believe that or not, that’s how it’s described, right? They go somewhere. And in most cases, we’re left here, trying to come to grips with the fact that that same body that we’ve been knowing and seeing and smiling at and loving all our lives is gone, just like that. It doesn’t smile at us anymore. It doesn’t pick up the phone anymore. It doesn’t hug us back anymore. It’s gone. 6 feet deep, cremated, lost to the world, or worse. How are we supposed to handle that? We don’t know what to do with that. How could we? Our world is physical. If we can’t see it or feel it, what are we supposed to do? That’s how we’ve done things since the day we were born.

When someone passes, and the physical connection to them is severed, is it possible to take those threads and convert them into a new connection to that person? A soul connection. A connection that isn’t felt or seen but remembered. Recognized. Effortless and eternal, like gravity and the cosmos. I like to think so.

My mom never stopped being my universe just because she left this world.

Happy Mother’s Day.

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The Secret Formula to the Perfect PB&J

It’s here that I have to make the obligatory callout to Smuckers Uncrustables. My mom and I did it before you, I don’t care what anyone says.

You, too, can follow this simple recipe and never buy an overpriced sealed sandwich again:

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of honey wheat bread

• Organic Peanut Butter (or sub in your preferred nut butter)

• Grape Jelly or Jam (or sub in your preferred fruit jelly or jam)

Directions:

1. Spread a thin layer of peanut butter on both pieces of bread. Be sure to spread the peanut butter all the way to the edge of the bread.

2. Spread the jelly on top of the peanut butter on one side of the bread, starting in the center and spreading outward. Leave about a half-inch border from the edge of the bread to the edge of the jelly.

3. Carefully put the two pieces of bread together to form a sandwich.

4. Press the edges of the sandwich to create a seal. (This is what that half-inch border from step 2 is for)

5. Serve with a glass of milk (or your preferred milk alternative).

6. Thank my mom 😊

The Perfect PB&J Recipe in Pictures