PBJ
This is a day that I very much need, a FuroSixty and Aleve day at home with no commitments whatsoever. The Aleve is already helping and the Furo is already striking. For all life's now and then hellishness, I wish you long years, yea even deep into extreme old age, because Time is all we have, and Life Itself Is Good.
A lifetime of smoking brought on major damage to blood vessels in her brain, with episodes in 2018 and again in 2023 that impaired our daughter Malinda's ability to function on her own. She's now a long term resident at Pruitt Health out on the north end of Jenks Avenue, and we go to visit her two afternoons a week, either Monday or Tuesday and then either Thursday or Friday.
Part of her brain damage is short term memory loss such that Malinda sometimes asks a nurse whether this is a mental hospital, or a prison, or whether she has family or anyone who ever comes to see her. It means that our visit is a happy moment for the moment only, but if you think about it, life's present moment is all we really have; anything else is a dream.
And as a matter of fact, messing around with my own brain, I've discovered that I can create and enjoy memories of events that historically never happened at all. If you're willing to trifle with your sanity, try it! Did something happen? It did if I remember it!
In the lobby at Pruitt Health there's a large video screen that cycles through notices about what's happening at the care home, residents' birthdays, employee birthdays, employee awards, the schedule when hairdressers will be on site by appointment, there's a theater so the weekend screens may tell what's playing, some afternoons there's an ice cream social, menus including the menu choices for the next meal and also a menu screen with a long list of what's always available so if a resident prefers something different they can order that.
Yesterday afternoon as I watched the screen, the "always available menu" caught my eye: PB&J sandwich, fruit salad, chef's salad, hamburger, cheeseburger, ... .
As that screen came around for the second or third Time, I remembered that in our house when I was growing up, we had a Sunday evening tradition for several years of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a milkshake, my memory usually a strawberry shake. We mixed the PB&J and our father made the milkshakes in the food mixer. We bought our ice cream at the Supreme Ice Cream shop located in Lokey's Ice Plant at E. 6th Street and (what?, Jenks Avenue). The PBJs were always smooth peanut butter and grape jelly.
Some PB&Js are made by spreading jelly on one slice of bread and peanut butter on the other slice. We always glumped the smooth peanut butter and grape jelly into a bowl, stirred and mixed, then spread it on the bread: one slice at a Time and fold the bread over for a half-sandwich. Always white bread because that's what we ate. Although Mama bought whole wheat bread for me because I liked it.
PB&J sandwich is an ultimate comfort food, or at least was here in the South when I was growing up. Yesterday the memory of it held in my mind all the way home, and when we arrived back in 7H about five-thirty or six o'clock I got out the PB (always Skippy extra chunky super-chunk) and "J" - - we never have grape jelly here, but there's always some kind of preserves or jam, I selected a strawberry jam from Germany; and we never eat American white bread, so it was Pepperidge Farm's extra thin whole wheat bread from Grocery Outlet just up Beck Avenue, I can see the store from my study office den. Anyway, mix, spread, fold over, had two PB&J half-sandwiches for supper last evening, and a glass of Japanese barley tea.
My friends, life is short, and we haven't much Time to enjoy ourselves and to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be quick to love and make haste to be kind.
Be kind: nothing else matters in life.
RSF&PTL
T88&c