Waco, TX

a morning in my hometown.

There is a small sandwich shop in Waco, TX— where I grew up— called Schmaltz’s. They serve lunch meat with sliced olives and chopped lettuce and garlic butter and three types of cheese on homemade bread. When I was in high school, I used to have lunch there at least once every two weeks. I passed through Waco today and stopped for lunch. I ordered small “schmaltz” with a cheese soup and a diet Dr. Pepper, the same meal I ate 15 years ago.

Halloween 2008, dressed up for a Haunted House fundraiser at my high school. We held it in a building that was mid-renovation.

The shop has not been renovated, the laminate coated booths are the same ones I remember, even the busboy was the same sunny man, he wore a Baylor University tee shirt today, just like I remember him wearing more than a decade ago. I picked up my lunch from the counter. There are not very many things in Waco that I miss but these sandwiches are unlike any other that I’ve had. I was nervous to order one, very often I remember things better than they really were and I did not want to ruin the memory. The chewy bread with thick cheese and salty meat tasted exactly like I hoped it would. My boyfriend said it was one of the top three sandwiches he’s ever had.

I don’t go back to Waco very often, I only spent a few hours there today and I don’t think I will spend serious time there in the future. But as I drove past strip malls and free standing restaurants, most of them un-renovated and exactly as I remembered them, I felt relieved. The tension I’ve held onto for the past ten months started to lighten. I did not need to use the GPS to know how to navigate the streets, I saw a woman whose children I used to babysit for, I think she still owes me $300 in unpaid wages. I did not bring it up.

Dressed for the holiday pep rally at my high school in 2008. I used to curl my top lip up when I smiled, on purpose. There was a woman on a reality show who did it and I thought she was so pretty so I copied her.

I drove familiar streets and told my boyfriend about the houses where parents let us have parties and the restaurants where we went to dinners before dances. We stopped by my high school where I spoke to my English teacher, the teacher who changed my life, and told her I am almost a writer. I sat with my godmother and boyfriend and we talked about sports and my old peers and my plans and her four sons.

I grew up in a brick ranch style house, painted light blue. The property was on a large piece of land with a fenced in dog run where my parents put two miniature donkeys called Daisy and Petunia, they turned the dog house into a make shift chicken coop, it was smelly and the donkeys were loud, they would neigh early in the mornings and late at night. Our neighbors complained. We lived on a corner lot next to a busy street. Often, the donkeys would escape, they were not trained and we did not have halters for them. When my parents noticed that the donkeys were gone, siblings and I would walk up and down the streets looking for them, catch them by their manes, and then drag them home. One day they got out and my parents decided we should not go find them.

“What happened to the donkeys after that?” my boyfriend asked me when I told him that story outside my house this afternoon.

“I don’t know, we just never saw them again.”

My high school had a themed dance almost every month. In 12th grade, for the halloween dance, a girl in my class coordinated to make match tee shirts with all of the senior women. She “forgot” to text me. Once, she changed my contact name in several friends phones to “Miss Piggy”. I wonder what she’s doing now.

For graduation, my small class sat on stage for the whole ceremony. Afterwards, a woman I did not know told me that she noticed I was sitting perfectly straight, paying attention, never fidgeting. She said I looked elegant. I had spent the whole ceremony focused on my posture, on laying the three kalalilies perfectly in the crook of my elbow. I didn’t think anyone would notice but it was important to me. I held on to that compliment for years.

Home isn’t always a perfect place, but sometimes you need to revisit where you came from to feel okay with where you’re going.

All my love,

Hannah Stella

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