FRIDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2014
One morning when I was five years old, I sat in a tree in our front yard waiting for the kindergarten bus to pick me up. My mother was in the kitchen making me a sandwich. The next moment the bus stopped in front of our house. I jumped out of the tree, opened the garden gate, and got into the bus.
As the bus was pulling away, I saw my mother standing in the front door with my sandwich in her hands.
It broke my heart. Years later I told her how deeply it affected me.
I am now 43. This morning I made myself a sandwich, kissed my wife goodbye, and cycled to the subway station.
While waiting for the train, I put the plastic bag with my sandwich on a bench. I reminded myself not to forget the bag (I easily get lost in conversation with myself).
That’s when I remembered the incident with my mother and the sandwich when I was five.
I wondered how I would have felt if my wife had made me the sandwich and I forgot the sandwich on the bench.
To my great pleasure, I realised it would have been deeply upsetting.
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