It was his brand. The kind I never bought before him.
The natural kind that separates and has to be stirred and he would stir it every morning, standing at the counter in his socks, not fully awake, methodical about the stirring in the way teenagers are methodical about the rituals that are theirs, that they have decided on without you, that belong to the version of themselves they are building in small domestic choices you are not supposed to notice but you notice everything, you have always noticed everything, that is the price and the privilege of being the mother.
He left in August.
I drove him. We loaded the car and I drove and we talked about practical things, the parking, the orientation schedule, where the laundry room was on his floor, whether he had enough hangers, the ordinary conversation of a practical woman managing her feelings by managing logistics because logistics are manageable and this is not.
I hugged him in the parking lot of his residence. I did not cry until I was back on the highway. I gave myself the highway. I think I earned the highway.
The jar was still in the fridge when I got home.
Almost full. He had not thought to take it. He would buy a new one there, he would have a new brand maybe, he would have a new fridge and new roommates and a new set of small morning rituals that I would not see, that would accumulate without my witnessing them, that would become the ordinary texture of a life I am no longer the primary author of.
I kept the jar.
I did not eat it. I moved it to make room for other things and I put it back. I do not know what I am waiting for. I know what I am waiting for. I am waiting for the part of me that knows he is fine, that he is more than fine, that he is becoming exactly who he was meant to become, to be loud enough to drown out the part of me that is standing in the kitchen holding a jar of peanut butter and missing the sound of his socks on the floor.
Both parts are true. I know both parts are true.
I keep the jar anyway.
