Misty watercolored memories

Little things can trigger a memory. The smell of someone’s cologne. A song on the radio. Today, it was Oscar Meyer liverwurst.

My mom and I have never had a strong relationship. It’s unfortunate, but it was caused by extenuating circumstances (i.e. my dad). Until Ava was born, it had been 15 years since we last spoke. A lot of time was lost, but I do have some strong memories of my childhood with her.

When I was young we moved a lot. When I say a lot, I mean I went to 22 schools from K-12. There were always different reasons for our nomadic nature. Dad sold insurance and he’d run out of customers in one town. My brother would get in trouble at school and Dad’s fix was to move rather than deal with it. Or, Dad just liked living at the beach so we’d rent a small condo for a season until the landlord tripled the rent on us.

Moving this much never paved the way for stability or traditions. But my mom and I managed to keep a handful of rituals.

We both liked liverwurst. On white bread with plain yellow mustard. Yes, it’s kind of gross, but as a five year old, I thought it was heaven. Who knows if I liked it because it tasted good or because we shared it together? But I remember us busting into my grandma’s stash and stealing a couple of sandwiches at the kitchen table.

I only have a couple of these memories, but they are so vivid I can taste the tanginess of the mustard coupled with the creamy texture and how it would melt in my mouth.

A few weeks ago, we visited her for the weekend. We were in the kitchen and I had just opened a bottle of wine.

“I have some liverwurst,” she said smiling.

I don’t buy liverwurst and haven’t in probably 15 years, but the way she said this made the sentiment clear. I could tell she shared my memories.

I smiled back and said, “I haven’t had that in years!”

And we stood there in the kitchen drinking red wine and eating our liverwurst. On pumpernickel minis with dijon mustard. Making up for lost time.