November 6, 2020:
Chocolate butter creams. The light ones.
She was generous with these. With all desserts. So long as they contained calories, she was for 'em. In whatever quantity I could handle.
There was a See's Candies down the street. At the Quad — the neighborhood shopping center — now the Village. Walk the blocks of identical green apartments, two stories, décor of oleander and green berry. Return with a white bag of sugar and fat, pound size, I suppose not entirely unlike a junkie returning from the dispensary.
Sometimes she wanted some, too. She preferred the dark ones, I the light. Like many other examples — vanilla, for one — my taste in adulthood now mirrors hers. Nowadays the lights seem bland. The darks have the sizzle. That's true of very many things.
Eventually she discovered Godiva. By then she had the bucks for splurges. She liked Godiva's aura of indulgence. I still prefer See's, the proletarian confectioners.
There was no candy nearby her final apartment. By then she was obscenely obese, not from treats but from old lady metabolism and lack of exercise. I'd have been happy to drive for candy for her. It's not what she wanted. She wanted closets filled with Swarovski, and a television tuned to Fox. "I don't like Mexicans," she'd say. "I might as well admit it."