My ham sandwich
Every time I eat a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard on it, I’m literally thrown back in time almost 20 years. In 1995, my family moved to NC after my dad’s father passed on, and my dad decided we should live in the old house where he grew up. When we moved here, there were a few things my parents wanted to do to fix up the house. For the time that the house was being redone, we lived next door in a smaller house my parents had bought in the 70s as their “home base” (Dad was in the military, so having one place to call their own no matter what was nice). Luckily, we had this little house to live in – albeit briefly and close quartered – until the big house was up to spec. Interesting note: I now own that “home base.”
It was May when we moved, and there was much to be done. I got my first job. My little brother started club soccer. My parents were renovating the upstairs so little bro and I could have our own bathroom (otherwise, there was only 1 bathroom in the entire house – eeks!).
In the heat of the NC summers (which was way more humid than the TX summers I was used to), my mom had us doing a lot of work. We were scrubbing floors, helping with carpet, moving boxes, and all those other typical moving in activities.
We would break for lunch, and I would always be sad that we weren’t getting to have McD’s or BK or something “fun.” Instead, my mom was making ham and cheese sandwiches. I would throw some mustard on there just to have some pizzazz. It wasn’t really what I wanted, but I was hungry and had no way to get anything different (where we live in NC – at the time – had no quick access to anything fast food-esque).
So now, any time that I bite into a homemade ham and cheese sandwich with mustard, I’m 16 going on 17 again and moving into our new house. I’m a rising senior in high school almost ready to have my final first day of school at a new school for my last year as a high school student. My brother and I are (mostly) carefree as we only need to worry about waiting tables or defending goals or deciding which poster to hang where.
Sometimes, I wish I could go back to 1995. There are some things I’d do much differently. There are other things I’d like to relive. Because no one has invented a time machine that actually works, I’ll just allow myself the opportunity to reminisce every now and again – right here in the same kitchen where I ate all those ham and cheese sandwiches.
