A Peanut-Butter-Cracker Kind of Love...

Peanut butter crackers are a marriage of unsophisticated fodder that brings joy to the roofs of mouths in the young and old alike. My 4 year-old niece takes delight in carefully wobbling on the ledge of a kitchen chair heaping globs of the nutty butter onto ordinarily bland crackers that have the savor of drywall. With the care and skill of a structural engineer, she maintains enough equilibrium to see to it that she finishes with a smeary paper plate full of the peanut butter and cracker smokestacks. After all of the precision artistry, they will be eaten in a matter of crunchy, crackery moments and the creamy, tan glob at the end of her nose will be the only evidence of their sweet, brief existence. Peanut butter was invented as a source of protein for the toothless, those who couldn’t chew tough meats. Saltine crackers by themselves are often reserved only for the ill and nauseated a digestive aid of sorts. But something magical happens when the two bare kitchen staples meet at the end of a bread knife and are matrimonially layered like earthen rock under sweet, heavy soil.

A few nights ago, after being tagged to prepare appetizers for a backyard party and a retirement bash, I hurriedly drove to the supermarket to gather last minute ingredients. The evening sky swirled with dark clouds as a storm readied itself to wreak havoc on what was otherwise a still, summer evening. As I threw my pickup into gear and dashed into the supermarket, the clouds saturated with thick warm rain, broke open and cloaked each stand of hair on my head and swept every bit of rouge off of my cheeks like rain racing down a pane of glass. As I dashed in, wiping soggy hair from my forehead, I managed to wrestle a shopping cart from the strand of metal carts in the store entrance and proceeded to take my basket on two wheels around the store as if I were being timed on a game show. The nippiness of the air-conditioner in the supermarket was quickly painting my lips a cool violet and causing my white, bony hands to tremble. I threw stalky produce into my cart, scanned the spice aisle for dip mixes, mistakening sloppy Joe powder for onion soup mix, and even braving the frostiness of the dairy case to score a few containers of sour cream. I scrawled through lines of crackers, chips, and sodas written on my notepad as I located them and added to my booty of party fare. My day had been predictably hectic and its outcome hatched an all-too-familiar headache by the time I had crossed the parking lot after punching out at the time clock. My heart was heavy as a friend shared news with me earlier that day of her intentions to divorce her husband after just a few, whirl-winded years of marriage. Images of the two of them floated in and out of my mind throughout the course of the day. They were sunburned and smiling, shoulder to shoulder on a beach during their honeymoon only seasons earlier. Snapshots of them scattered and random, once blissful and full of hope, tender-hearted and wide-eye, played like a slideshow set to a James Taylor soundtrack against the backdrop of my pounding forehead. I floored it down the cereal aisle. It was there I almost mowed them down.

Beyond the bend of the end cap that sheltered the teetering skyscraper of Captain Crunch boxes, I commanded my buggy vengefully forward as if it were a team of Clydesdales driven by a zealous whip. Til that moment, I was previously unaware of any other shoppers in the store. They were a sight that stopped my team of thundering horsepower dead in their wheel ruts. My cans of pimentos and green chiles abruptly shifted forward in my race cart as I slammed on my breaks to keep from hitting them. They were not startled and he barely looked up from the tops of his tiny, wet shoes. They were an ancient couple, delicate yet sturdy, simple but purposed. She was aware, the leader, the instruction giver. He followed, holding softly to her bony elbow as she navigated the store, both of them shuffling and bent. The humidity that evening was torrential, like a wet sleeping bag draped from my shoulders. Despite this, she wore a wool cardigan, grey like her skin and a knee-length skirt that barely met the tops of her knee-high pantyhose bearing several snags. Her face was small and heart-shaped and her eyes were draped in yards of worn, velvety skin and looked out from behind thick, outdated lenses. She was their leader. The album in my mind had flipped over on its phonograph and when the needle met the vinyl, it began to trumpet old Edith Piaf songs in French. They swooned and swirled, forever young, trapped in a storybook without end, he the hero and she his envied prize. The old man, crooked and curved, was the same shape as the quivering cane he gripped in his veiny, blue hands. Though a Tuesday, he was dressed for Friday night. His tie was crooked but tight, and his suit jacket bore the wear of decades of distant relative’s wedding receptions and the funerals of childhood friends. I tried to look occupied and hoped they wouldn’t notice the way I had unknowingly invited myself on their shopping trip this evening. I busied myself by picking up cans of black beans and pretending to run my finger along the backs of their labels checking fiber content. She patted his arm and reminded him of how much he used to like pea soup, but he was far away. I noticed how his colorless eyes were baggy and full of water. His stare was blank, but I could see him in there. I saw him perched atop a tractor in a summer field swollen with wheat and fragranced by clover on the wind. He waved across the field to her as she rang him in for supper. I saw him coming home from the war; youthful and shiny, but secretly bruised. He smiled to himself. Wherever he was, I knew she was there too. She silently scuffled in her sensible loafers and gently bent to retrieve a box of no-name crackers from a bottom shelf of our aisle. Unable to free both of her arms for shopping, the ancient lady held the box of crackers to her bosom while her handbag swung from her skeletal wrist. The old man never let go of her other elbow and it made me think about love.

I met them again at the checkout. I was already in line when they arrived behind me, unhurried and content to be sluggish, like a pair of old, wise turtles. They had but two items to load on the conveyor and I watched their no-name crackers ride the moving sidewalk with their small jar of peanut butter. An otherwise ordinary Tuesday and an otherwise ordinary snack was a grand affair for this pair of old-time lovers who were unstoppable neither by acts of nature nor by their food budget. I met her eyes as I swiped my debit card in the reader and she smiled and continued to burrow down in her handbag for a fistful of rumpled dollar bills. He never let go of her elbow. His eyes, hollow and vacated, gaped toward the racks of beef jerky and bubble gum next to the register and I hoped he would look up at me. I loaded my provisions in my basket when my payment was complete and I took my time, pokey and impeding, gathering my wallet and receipt back into my purse. It was then he looked up from his tractor ride, from his war homecoming, and smiled impassively at me. My throat clenched as if it had been stuffed with a melon and I thought about love again.

The rain must have kept everyone else home, cozy and far from the inconvenience of a little summer storm; but not them. The rain was no occasion for hindrance or delaying a simple pleasure like a plateful of peanut butter crackers for this pair who had traveled the stretches of time together. I climbed into my pickup and watched the rain tumble down my windshield, now foggy with my moist breath. I rubbed a spot on the driver’s window enough to see them come out of the store together, no umbrellas, just the cloaking of the hot sky. He never let go of her elbow. She kindly seated him in the passenger seat of the long, clean Buick they owned. She folded his seatbelt neatly across his lap and placed the plastic sac of peanut butter and crackers on the tops of his slight thighs. The wet sack must have dampened his dress slacks, but he made no fuss. She kissed his cheek and at a snail’s pace, nestled herself in the driver’s seat for their ride home.

What happens to the filling of love? New love is hard to measure or rope. Like a plastic bag on the wind, it blows where it may, light and free, airy and without definition or shape. We chase it. It moves faster, dipping and gliding, causing our hearts to skip and our breath to labor. Few of us ever love long enough to see peanut butter crackers on a Tuesday night in a thunderstorm. I drove home thinking about what happens to all of the stuff on the middle? I thought about my friend and her situation. When and how do we fall out of love? Is it like falling out of a cab after too many gin and tonics on Saturday night? Do we just try to roll out of the way quickly so we are not caught beneath the rubber and peeled out on? Is it like falling out of a hot-air balloon, barreling towards earth, smashing through the stratosphere on your belly, hoping you land in once piece and can brush yourself off and walk away without a noticeable limp? The sands slip through the glass and we are not allowed to stop the timer and flip it over again when the rain stops. I don’t want to fall out of love. I want my Tuesday nights to consist of snagged pantyhose and a record player, crackly and aged, spinning the soundtrack to my life and my love; Italian arias and a stack of peanut butter crackers, our memories present yet ever-so-distant.