Not long ago, I said to my husband, Clif, “I have a new hobby.”

“Oh?”

“I like to go in the backyard and collect sticks and branches. The sticks I can break by hand and use for kindling. With the branches, I use the little hand saw. But they’re good for the furnace, too.”

Clif gave me a look suggesting that even though we have been married for 36 years, I still have the ability to surprise him. But all he said was “Well, go for it.”

And so I have. Today, I will be recycling our Christmas tree, stripping the branches and sawing the trunk into smaller logs. “They’ll be good for the fire pit,” Clif had to admit.

Scavenging the woods and backyard for twigs and branches might sound like a weird kind of hobby, but I am the sort of person who enjoys puttering around the home—cooking, yard work, tidying, cleaning—all right, maybe cleaning not so much. Unlike work that is done for others, however necessary or profitable it might be, work done for the home just has a different feel. It’s more personal and more direct, done for the family or for oneself. Somehow that makes all the difference. Simply put, for me it is more satisfying to work for myself than it is to work for others, and I find any work that bolsters the home or the family to be very rewarding.

I realize there is much work that must be done outside the house, and indeed I do my fair share of volunteering at the town library and food pantry. I realize that not everyone is in a position to spend their days at home. Every household needs money. Finally, I realize not everyone has the temperament to enjoy the usual days of work around the home. But I do, and I count myself as one of the lucky ones who not only enjoys work around the home but who also has the luxury of staying home and doing that work.

Times change, as they must, and women are no longer required to stay home, as they shouldn’t be. However, I can’t help but feel that people—men as well as women—who enjoy the little things, the puttering—the work that goes toward making a house a home—have a better shot at a life that is not only full of contentment but one that is rich as well.

Not long ago, at a foodie meeting I went to in Brunswick, a woman I met—Laura—spoke passionately about how food was so central to everyone’s life and how food nourished more than the body. I found myself nodding in agreement, and my first thoughts were of the writer Proust, whose plain little cookie—the madeleine—triggered a cascade of memories.  That a cookie could bring forth such a rush of emotions shows that food is as symbolic as it is real, feeding a person on more than one level.

Well, Proust had his madeleine, and I have my egg salad sandwich, always served with chips and Pepsi. Oddly enough, I am not especially fond of chips. I don’t dislike them, but I’m seldom inclined to eat half a bag at a time, the way my husband, Clif, does. Nevertheless, when I have egg salad sandwiches, I always want chips. And Pepsi.

This goes back to my childhood, to the times my family would visit my Uncle Leo, my Aunt Barney, and my cousins Linda and Carol. They lived in Norridgewock, and in those long-ago days when traveling by car was less common, the trip to their house felt like a real event.

In my memory, which admittedly could be faulty, we usually went on a Sunday, after mass and after dinner, which was at noon. I will pinpoint my memories even further. I am about 8, my brother, Steve, is just a baby. The ride seems long to me, but I don’t care. We are on the way to Norridgewock, perhaps 40 minutes away from our house in Vassalboro.

My aunt and uncle’s house was just as clean and as gleaming as our own house. As a rule, Franco-Americans have a passion for cleanliness that borders on obsession, and if they didn’t also have a balancing passion for fun, then they would be a real drag as an ethnic group.

If the weather was good, we would go for a walk in the pine grove behind their house. If the weather was bad, Carol and I would play with her toys while the adults chatted. Linda, who is a few years older than Carol and I, mostly stayed with the adults. Then came the magic hour, supper time, around 5:00, with everyone grouped around the small table in the kitchen. Was Steve in a high chair? I don’t remember. Unlike the taciturn Yankees, Franco-Americans are a chatty ethnic group, so there was always a lot of talking. And then, of course, along with the talking and the fellowship of the family being together, there were the egg salad sandwiches and chips and Pepsi—everything so entwined that it cannot be separated.

My brother also has fond memories of these egg-salad suppers, so I am sure the tradition carried through long after he had grown from a baby to a toddler to a little boy.

Not long ago, when I met Carol and Linda for breakfast in Waterville, I mentioned egg salad sandwiches and family suppers and what good memories I have of them.

Carol said, “Neither of our families were large, so when we got together, it seemed as though we were a big family.”

She is right, and, as a bonus, our families got along really well.

But along with the kinship, egg salad—humble, hearty, and oh so good—was the food that bound us together.