Recalling Good

J craved Cheetos for a few days after she returned from college recently, stressed over many things not to mention the logistics of flying home amid so much uncertainty. I got her a bag and we had some together. The texture of Cheetos breaking in my mouth reminded me of the first time I had them. I was newly wed then. J's father was showing me around America and introducing to things he had discovered the couple of years he had been around here before me. One of them was Cheetos. The other was a tuna melt croissant at Dunkin Donuts. 

The first couple of times were fun and novel with both but soon I wanted to eat healthier. Wanted to pack meals and snacks if went on a road-trip, stop at a grocery store for bread and cheese rather than eat fast-food. This divergence in goals and taste proved to be the first of many to follow until the marriage disintegrated. Yet when I recalled the times we stopped by to grab the tuna melt in the dead of the night in the middle of nowhere, I thought of the friendship I shared with him. 

Not a good marriage but we got along great as friends as unlikely a pair as we were. He was always fun to talk to, interested in many things and deeply curious about the world. But for J craving the Cheetos, we would not have had this conversation. With the passage of time, it has become much easier to forget the bad and the ugly of our relationship and recall the good.