version.
First Luke was doling the Caps out to me in daily cupfuls, but after a couple of days I started stealing refills from his drawer in the afternoon. This was awkward, so I made him give me the whole bag. The concentrated scent of sugar wafted from the paper cup.
I knew that Luke meant the gift to be kind. It was a gesture of peace. But I was disturbed by the Bottle Cap offering. Bottle Caps were my favorite candy. For anyone who knew me, they were an easy hit, but hard to find. I had a few friends who had, at one point or another, gone out of their way to track down Bottle Caps for me. All my associations were pure. I didn’t want to have to associate them with a breakup bribe. They were meant for good, uncomplicated times. Accepting them from Luke, with the taste of our separation hovering in their sugary halo, felt dangerous. It was like taking candy from a stranger—a gift with too much intention. Oh, but of course I had to eat them—because they were there. I ate them all day long, and on the way home, and at home, and on the way back to work in the morning.
Instead of smoothing things over, as it was meant to, eating the Bottle Caps that Luke gave me reminded me of what had been wrong. In the course of our relationship, he had given me tokens of his affection, but his heart had been missing. And now, too late, here was the shrunken assertion that I was in his thoughts. I knew the candies were a miserable little representation of sorrow, not genuine attachment. The sweetness tasted artificial. Well, it had always been artificial, but this time it was up to no good. I didn’t want this miniature version of affection to woo me falsely. So I resolved that as soon as the mini Caps were gone, I would stop caring entirely. I couldn’t eat them fast enough.
Swiss Chocolate Ice Cream
T here were days when mint chip reigned. Then the ice-cream industry began to permute its flavors endlessly, adding candy, cookie dough, swirls of caramel and fudge, and so on. I was quickly seduced by the strangely named hybrids that gave candy a refreshing new context. But sometimes the classics were still the best.
My grandparents lived on a hill, at the top of a long driveway bordered by azaleas. My grandmother’s pantry was not to be rivaled. She always stocked chocolate soda, multiple flavors of ice cream, large Cadbury chocolate bars, and a full drawer of grocery store penny candy by the pound. Every Halloween she laboriously composed bags of assorted candies, tied with orange ribbons. No one ever ventured up her treacherous driveway to claim their prizes: One banner year she had a total of two trick-or-treaters. The remaining bags lasted through months of our visits.
My grandmother also stocked my father’s favorite ice-cream flavor. It was called Swiss Chocolate, and it was made by a local ice-cream store called Giffords. Even among ice-cream eaters who didn’t favor chocolate or had been seduced by the new variations, Swiss Chocolate was widely heralded. Sometimes my grandmother lost track of the store because it moved more than once. There were periodic rumors that it was going out of business. But every so often, as the years passed, my grandmother would pull out a new carton.
My grandmother was a pack rat. There were two refrigerators, both overflowing with more food than she and my grandfather could possibly consume in a year. It never occurred to me that this was a fallible system until my grandmother died. One morning she got up early to let the dogs out, went back to bed, and there her heart stopped. In the days after the funeral, we started cautiously getting rid of some of the clutter in the kitchen. There were giant plastic bags assembling a lifetime supply of rubber bands. There was an enormous collection of bottles that I packed up for recycling. One freezer was full of undated meat packages, all of which I threw away. My father found a preserved piece of his bar mitzvah cake. A can of Coke had
First Luke was doling the Caps out to me in daily cupfuls, but after a couple of days I started stealing refills from his drawer in the afternoon. This was awkward, so I made him give me the whole bag. The concentrated scent of sugar wafted from the paper cup.
I knew that Luke meant the gift to be kind. It was a gesture of peace. But I was disturbed by the Bottle Cap offering. Bottle Caps were my favorite candy. For anyone who knew me, they were an easy hit, but hard to find. I had a few friends who had, at one point or another, gone out of their way to track down Bottle Caps for me. All my associations were pure. I didn’t want to have to associate them with a breakup bribe. They were meant for good, uncomplicated times. Accepting them from Luke, with the taste of our separation hovering in their sugary halo, felt dangerous. It was like taking candy from a stranger—a gift with too much intention. Oh, but of course I had to eat them—because they were there. I ate them all day long, and on the way home, and at home, and on the way back to work in the morning.
Instead of smoothing things over, as it was meant to, eating the Bottle Caps that Luke gave me reminded me of what had been wrong. In the course of our relationship, he had given me tokens of his affection, but his heart had been missing. And now, too late, here was the shrunken assertion that I was in his thoughts. I knew the candies were a miserable little representation of sorrow, not genuine attachment. The sweetness tasted artificial. Well, it had always been artificial, but this time it was up to no good. I didn’t want this miniature version of affection to woo me falsely. So I resolved that as soon as the mini Caps were gone, I would stop caring entirely. I couldn’t eat them fast enough.
Swiss Chocolate Ice Cream
T here were days when mint chip reigned. Then the ice-cream industry began to permute its flavors endlessly, adding candy, cookie dough, swirls of caramel and fudge, and so on. I was quickly seduced by the strangely named hybrids that gave candy a refreshing new context. But sometimes the classics were still the best.
My grandparents lived on a hill, at the top of a long driveway bordered by azaleas. My grandmother’s pantry was not to be rivaled. She always stocked chocolate soda, multiple flavors of ice cream, large Cadbury chocolate bars, and a full drawer of grocery store penny candy by the pound. Every Halloween she laboriously composed bags of assorted candies, tied with orange ribbons. No one ever ventured up her treacherous driveway to claim their prizes: One banner year she had a total of two trick-or-treaters. The remaining bags lasted through months of our visits.
My grandmother also stocked my father’s favorite ice-cream flavor. It was called Swiss Chocolate, and it was made by a local ice-cream store called Giffords. Even among ice-cream eaters who didn’t favor chocolate or had been seduced by the new variations, Swiss Chocolate was widely heralded. Sometimes my grandmother lost track of the store because it moved more than once. There were periodic rumors that it was going out of business. But every so often, as the years passed, my grandmother would pull out a new carton.
My grandmother was a pack rat. There were two refrigerators, both overflowing with more food than she and my grandfather could possibly consume in a year. It never occurred to me that this was a fallible system until my grandmother died. One morning she got up early to let the dogs out, went back to bed, and there her heart stopped. In the days after the funeral, we started cautiously getting rid of some of the clutter in the kitchen. There were giant plastic bags assembling a lifetime supply of rubber bands. There was an enormous collection of bottles that I packed up for recycling. One freezer was full of undated meat packages, all of which I threw away. My father found a preserved piece of his bar mitzvah cake. A can of Coke had
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