February love number 16

So tonight we had a repeat of the dinner we had two weeks ago: tomato macaroni soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. As I pulled sandwiches off the hot sandwich maker, I realized that it, along with Ben's dresser and a table that my dad made in high-school wood shop, are among the few items I've carried around with me my whole adult life. I took it with me to college two different times, have moved it from apartment to house to house and it still works just like it did in when it was first purchased.

I have a very clear memory of making grilled cheese sandwiches with this very sandwich maker with my friend Janna. We were living in the apartment I had in downtown Salt Lake in 1994. It was summertime and I had just been to my third Grateful Dead concert and had celebrated my 19th birthday. Janna and I stood in our tiny kitchen and she kept calling the sandwiches I was making for us "crunchy sandwiches" rather than "grilled cheese sandwiches." I laughed at her and she laughed at me and I asked her why she kept saying that and she said it was because that is what she thought I had said when I suggested dinner that night. So it kind of stuck and we at a lot of crunchy sandwiches that summer.

It's kind of dumb- just a little snippet of a moment - but it came back so powerfully to me. You know that little smell that comes off of your hand mixer - a conglomeration of all the powdered sugar that has been sucked inside it over the years? I think it's the same with waffle irons and, as I realized tonight, sandwich makers. I loved that this memory came back to me tonight. It was one of the most uncomplicated times of my life. I went to work everyday with Shane but we were just friends. After work I would hang out in my room with my two best friends/roommates, sitting on the top bunk of our bunk beds and smoking out the window, or going for coffee at the Salt Lake Roasting company. It was a fun time of life, and it was all brought back to me with that one little whiff.

So tonight I'm loving my memories of my younger days, before any drama that rocked our friendships or we got married or went away to college of out state or had kids or whatever. Sure, my life wasn't perfect. Stuff would happen in the next few months that would change everything forever. But right then, we were just friends eating crunchy sandwiches and loving life. And it's all embodied in a little appliance that lives under my counter.