By Virginia Amis

Like most kids, I had grown up eating peanut butter. Smooth or crunchy, alone or with strawberry jam, I did not care. My veins ran with the legume. At the time it was cheap and there were many lunches to pack. My mother tried to make it interesting, vary our peanut butter sandwiches using with different combinations: peanut butter and apple butter; peanut butter and chocolate bars, broken into pieces. Peanut butter and bacon. Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. Every day a new peanut butter sandwich surprise. I loved them all. I was not ready to fall out of love with peanut butter in 1977.

It was June. Wedged into my moss green subcompact were my mother, my sister, and me as we set off on a journey from Pittsburgh to Oklahoma City. I was leaving home to join my new husband who was already there setting up our first residence in his home state. Not wanting me to make the drive alone, my mother and sister joined me, each planning to fly home after the car trip.

My petite mother was wedged into the back seat with items I had chosen to move myself piled high on the seat next to her. I completely disregarded that three adults and their essential luggage also had to fit in the limited space. My sister and I took up the front seat, alternating up to six hours apiece behind the wheel. A few times I spelled my mother and let her sit in the front passenger seat while I leaned my head on my red wool coat and took a nap.

By day three, we had grown weary with the long hours spent together in cramped quarters. Our conversations about interesting road side attraction signs, the weather in Oklahoma and would I acquire a twang in my speech had run their course. I did not mind quiet time, but my sister and I were not alike in that regard.

We were traveling on a particularly boring stretch in Kansas, the highest elevation an overpass, when my sister began telling us the plots of all the books she had read in the last year.

To be fair, I should have done more to contribute to the conversation. That might have put her off a bit, made her know that she did not have to fill in every empty moment with the sound of her own voice. After several hours of her “story time,” I was glad for the pit stop urged by the fuel tank dial showing close to “E.” As I pulled into the station, I remember thinking if I could stretch the stop, I would not have to hear about another book for ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, somewhat refreshed, we resumed our travels, this time my sister behind the wheel. From my purse I pulled out several packages of peanut butter crackers wrapped in cellophane and offered them all around. At least, if my sister were eating, she would not be talking. My mother peeled hers open and began to munch. But my sister waved away the offering. 

“You know,” she said as she pulled back on to the interstate, “In the Book of Lists I read where there is a governmental quota for how many flies are considered acceptable in peanut butter as it is being packaged by the manufacturer.”

“What?”

My mother stopped chewing.

“It’s true! They can’t keep them out so the government tells them how many are allowed in a batch.”

I looked down at the unopened package of peanut butter crackers sitting in my lap. We broke up that day, peanut butter and me. The world has never been the same. As for my relationship with my sister, I have found silence to be the best approach.

© 2023 Virginia Amis

Virginia Amis has published stories in Perspectives Magazine, Reminisce Extra, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Scribes Valley Publishing Anthologies, Beyond the Norm, Where Tales Grip, and Story Harvest, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, For Women Who Roar, several Writing It Real Anthologies and in 101words.com.   Her characters are inspired by family, the extraordinary people she has had the pleasure to meet, and by the beauty of natural surroundings near her Pacific Northwest home.