The Postscript: Barely remembered

“The worst thing,” I told my mother, “was when you made us eat venison sausage for lunch. That sausage lasted forever!”

I am visiting my parents, and we somehow got to discussing our less-than-favorite foods. My mother always made wonderful school lunches with fresh fruit and a homemade cookie. But memory is fickle. What I remember most clearly was when my father brought home from work what seemed to me, as an elementary-school-age kid, a venison sausage the size of a baseball bat, and I had to eat sandwiches made from it — forever, as I recall.

“That was not the worst thing,” my father said....