The Weird Grief of A Pimento {and} Cheese Sandwich

There’s a particular memory I have of my father—most likely a conglomeration of dozens of these tiny occurrences. I remember seeing him with his back to me, standing at the kitchen counter. There’s a tiny jar of red peppers, a much larger jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise, and some yellowy-orange cheese. I can hear the soft tinkling sounds of a butter knife against a bowl, the rustling of a bag of white bread. In a matter of moments there’s a sandwich on a plate—2 simple squares of white bread with a mushy pinkish orange something spread in between.

I don’t know if I’m the only weirdo running around calling this a pimento *and* cheese sandwich but that’s how my little kid ears heard it and no one ever told me otherwise. I must have seen my dad make dozens, hundreds of these sandwiches over the years. They were the perfect quick lunch or mid afternoon snack on the weekends in between whatever he was working on around the house.

I never had a strong opinion on this sandwich—it was mushy and weird in a good way but I think I preferred a classic PB&J. (But really isn’t a PB&J also just some bread with a mushy filling? Two sides of the same soft sandwich coin?) I remember at church functions trays of little triangle pimento and cheese sandwiches would always appear and I knew that was a me-friendly food (way more appetizing than weird casseroles and cocktail weenies) so they were inevitably on my plate. It was the white noise of food throughout my childhood—always reliably floating around but never calling attention directly.

Comfort.

It’s been, oh, 10 or 15 years since I’ve had a pimento and cheese sandwich? Once I went off to college my diet shifted more firmly to mac and cheese, fruit gummies (health!), and Taco Bell. The memories of the orangey mush sandwich faded away.

But a global pandemic and the constant fear of losing things you love does weird things to a person. And suddenly this simple sandwich spread was at the forefront of my mind. I NEEDED to make it, to taste it again. Would it calm my frazzled nerves? Make my skin tingle with warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia? Reconnect me to my roots thus making me a more whole person?

But it was the next thoughts that really brought the trouble. What is pimento and cheese? Surely just cheese, mayo, and pimentos, right? I wanted to check, just to be sure, before I went on my weekly grocery run. Googling brought up all kinds of varied recipes—cream cheese AND mayo! multiple types of cheese! worcestershire! grated onion! chopped jalapeños! My neck started sweating. I tried hard to recall those fuzzy memories of my jean shirt clad father and his jars on the counter. He was a simple man—surely it was just the cheese, mayo and pimentos. Right? Oh but he did like spice—was there a bottle of hot sauce or jar of jalapeños hiding in the fuzziness? What were his ratios? Did he have a secret ingredient?!

DAMMIT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE COMFORTING.

And that leads me to the particular grief a pimento and cheese sandwich holds for me. Why not just ask him what was in his stupid orange spread, right? My father and I haven’t spoken face-to-face in over a decade. I don’t have the type of relationship with him that would make picking up the phone and asking him what the heck he put in his pimento and cheese normal—his mayo to cheese ratio would be pretty low on the list of things we’d need to talk about. There is love between us, yes. But there are also hard, prickly things between us too. It’s a particular kind of grief, to be so separated from someone who was once so much a part of you. Love is difficult, families are complicated. Sometimes that the only truth we can rely on.

And so in my quest to make myself a comforting pimento and cheese sandwich I instead just made myself sad. COOL, VERY FUN, LOVE IT.

Very much deterred yet unreasonably even more fixated on making this g*d damn sandwich, I took myself to the grocery store—a place I used to find comfort but which now only causes my anxious brain to practically convulse with stress. I glared at everyone who got too close to me while I snagged a block of sharp cheddar. I momentarily considered whether or not my father would have gotten a bag of the pre-shredded stuff but dismissed that because 1)) he strikes me as the kind of person who would shred his own cheese and 2) this is a pointless endeavor anyways.

Standing in my kitchen I shredded my cheese and mixed my 3 simple ingredients together with some salt in a bowl. I kept moving the orangey paste around in the bowl, knowing I needed to try it. Would this be right? Would it be so obviously wrong it was laughable? Would it be exactly how I remember and be entirely underwhelming and prove that this whole endeavor was dumb from the jump? Oh my god was I really hoping this stupid sandwich spread would somehow MEAN something? I took a bite.

It was good. Familiar and good. My shoulders relaxed.

I spread it onto a slice of Sunbeam white bread and added a second slice on top. Cut into triangles, my pimento and cheese sandwich—still a little weighed down with the complications of grief but very edible just the same—was complete.

I hadn’t learned some valuable life lesson. My feelings and memories are just as complicated as ever. Still definitely need therapy. But there was a peace, maybe?, in having done this very simple task of making myself a this stupid pimento and cheese sandwich.

I could get by with that.