The Sweet Stuff

I can count the number of times I have been drunk on one hand. And if you open my refrigerator in the middle of May, you are guaranteed to find a few chocolate bars leftover from Halloween. But don’t get me wrong. I enjoy sipping a glass of wine or a cold beer. I also have a serious sweet tooth. I am getting ahead of myself though. Let’s take it back 45 years. 

When I was a baby, my mother did what any mother would do to help her child learn dexterity. She put bite-size snacks on my highchair tray for me to grab in my fists. But take a closer look at that 1970s photograph. You won’t see Cheerios cereal in my chubby hands, those circular whole grain oats held up proudly like Olympic rings. Look again. 

Ah, yes, now you see what Mom gave me to eat. Chocolate chip morsels, like tiny bronze Smurf hats, the apex curled slightly in joy. Maybe she thought the resemblance to the Ancient Roman pileus caps that signified freedom for the slaves also signified freedom for her child to self-feed. Malarkey. My mother loved chocolate, and she figured if she was going to model for her daughter how to pick up food and eat it, then it better be something more delicious than a tasteless grain.

Thus began a lifetime love of sweets. We had cookies in the house. We had ice cream. We had snack cakes. And we always had a candy bowl, overflowing like a meadow of wildflowers – oxeye daisies, purple coneflowers, chicory, red columbine, asters, and yarrow. You name the chocolate and it was in there: Rollos, Kit Kats, Hershey’s miniatures, malted milk balls, Reese’s, M&Ms. 

But again, look closely at that picture. Consider that most candy wrappers are brown or orange. Why did it look like a rainbow in that bowl? Because the candy was ever present, it spent more time in the bowl than melting in the mouth. Halloween candy was masked in the snowflakes of red and green Christmas candy wrappers. Pastel Easter foils popped up like spring sprouts in a bouquet of red and pink Valentines. That candy bowl was Willy Wonka’s factory, rapidly spitting out confections to a saturated market. I liked candy, but I had no desire to eat it every day.

The same can be said for alcohol. My parents were partial to adult beverages and the social drinking atmosphere. During my childhood summers, we spent weekends on our boat. Dock parties, island hopping, and bar bands were their religion. People and friends were falling down drunk as if Slain in the Spirit. By age fifteen, I was openly offered wine coolers and joined the celebration of life.

During my childhood winters, my parents hosted house parties. Dad converted the downstairs playroom into a legit bar, complete with a counter flap, high-backed stools, and an antique cash register. The bar was a lesson in chemistry, from the aluminum and neon beer signs covering the walls to the dozens of ethanol concoctions, their jade, amber, and cobalt bottles scattered on the shelves like sea glass. By age seventeen, I was taking hits of Peppermint Schnapps, the minty menthol like swallowing a shot of winter in a glass. But by the legal age of twenty-one, the unlocked liquor cabinet lost its appeal. I had already tasted what my peers now craved, and so I walked away from yet another candy dish.

Maybe it was a good thing, being granted unlimited access to such vices. There was no need to beg. There was no need to sneak around. I was desensitized to the allure. The more I was given, the less I wanted. 

Today, I am content to savor a glass of pinot noir and a single dark chocolate macadamia nut candy from Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii. I’ve been there, by the way. Twice. With another trip planned this year. I wonder how many more cross-country vacations it will take before the Aloha state joins the ranks of “been there, done that.” The mountains, the waves, the pineapple, the hula. Leave the lei around my neck, please. I may need to taste the sweet stuff a little bit more.