Peanut Butter and Jelly

 February 15, 2022

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are part of the fabric of childhood for most kids.  This was true for me as well, but for me it didn’t just represent childhood; it was uncertainty and instability.  It was a reminder that things had changed–monumentally so.  It was loss and fear and the end of innocence.  

Sometimes I am in awe of the courage it took my mother to pull herself and her children out of the volatile situation we found ourselves in.  A young mom with five children, 13 years and under, she found herself one night throwing whatever we could fit into the trunk of our car to seek safety and shelter elsewhere, as far away from our home as she could get.  The younger kids in the family really didn’t have much of a concept of what was going on–they thought we were just going off on an adventure.  I was older, though, and much more of a confidante than I should have been at that age.  I knew that night was going to change everything about our lives.  

We drove to a payphone across town, after Mom had taken many backstreets and circuitous avenues.  She was afraid she might be followed.  At the payphone, Mom called the local Marjorie Mason Center.  Unfortunately, there was no room at the inn.  It’s difficult to house a mom with several small children, even for a home dedicated to domestic violence victims.  (To be honest, I held a child’s grudge against the Marjorie Mason Center for a long time.  They were supposed to be there for families in need, but they could not help us in our desperate time.)  The best they could do for us was to offer a place to stay several cities away.  We didn’t have enough gas to get there, or enough money to pay for the fuel it would take.

Finally we landed at our youth pastor’s house in the middle of the night.  He and his wife took us in, but were unprepared to keep us all for more than a night.  They just didn’t have the space.  The next day we all ended up on the floor of a spare bedroom in one of my mom’s student’s homes.  The student, who was close with my mom, had talked with her mother, who extended the offer.  I have no idea how Alma knew the details of why we were in need of a place to stay, but I imagine it must have been incredibly humbling to my mom.

Alma’s mom fed us a meal, but Mom couldn’t bear to have the family feel like they were responsible for continuing to feed us.  Their family had their own financial struggles.  Mom had no access to her own bank account–many wives didn’t in the 1970s–, and payday was still two weeks away.  She took the $20 bill from her purse and went to the grocery store to get food that could be stretched out over several days and that wouldn’t go bad without a refrigerator.  Peanut butter and jelly and bread were our lifesavers in those days.  It was our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for nearly two weeks. We sequestered ourselves in that spare bedroom while Mom was trying to figure out her next moves.  She had to move from immediate survival mode to future planning mode.  This current situation was only sustainable for a very short time.  While she planned and strategized, she also had to keep five young children fed and quiet.  

“Why can’t we go outside and play?”

“Where’s Dad?”

“I’m bored! There aren’t any toys here to play with.”

“I want to go back home!”

“WHHHYYYY do we have to have peanut butter and jelly again? I hate peanut butter and jelly!”

We were kids.  We whined. We wheedled.  We cried.  We yelled.  Sometimes she would respond in sadness, sometimes in anger and frustration. She didn’t want to be here in this position any more than we did, but now that we were, it was her job to figure out what our next steps were.  It must have been overwhelming.  It must have panicked her sometimes and kept her awake on her palette of blankets long after she could hear the slow, steady breathing of her children as sleep overtook them at night.  If it was just her, it would have been easier.  But to be wholly responsible for five young lives who couldn’t help her and who were bewildered by the breakneck speed with which all our circumstances changed must have been a heavy burden that weighed on her constantly.

It was a turning point, for us and for her.  We did finally find more permanent shelter, after bouncing from place to place for a time.  I don’t know how she managed to gather resources and help, but I know there were many kind people who helped along the way, in ways both big and small.  I marvel at her perseverance, her willingness to set aside pride, her resilience, and her courage.  She shielded us as much as she could, but it would take years before she regained her financial equilibrium after striking it out on her own.  Things weren’t easy, but they got manageable. I think those immediate years after that night affected all of us children differently.  We all had different perceptions and memories of those days and the months that followed. For me, weirdly, a lot of it centered around those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I guess it was easier to focus my frustration and anger from that time period on the fact that we didn’t have any choice other than to swallow the only thing that was put in front of us, rather than deal with what put us in that situation in the first place. 

It was more than twenty years before I could touch one of those sandwiches again.