And Counting

It's now two days after Christmas, and counting. The tree is still lighted at night, and the cats still love to sleep under it. It is as if each small light were a sun, giving off a planet's worth of heat, for them to bask in. And yes, it is the quiet time in the morning again; just about an hour or so before dawn. It is more quiet and still now than any day I have lived in my new digs.

I overdosed on some chocolate last night, for the first time in my new apartment. I have been successful at avoiding it, but got some for Christmas. That's the last of it. Believe it or not, I was not raised knowing the delights of chocolate. It was too rare, and unknown, from too far away, to be affordable for my grandparents. Although they did drink coffee. It is a puzzle to me to this day...

Anyway. So, chocolate, is has a 'foreign' taste to it, to me. My rare experiences with it in my childhood were limited to Tootsie Rolls, received on Halloween. A treat was a piece of raw potato, fished out of the water my mother dropped them into, when she made potato salad, or beef stew. As a child, I loved the candy called Sweet Tarts, that came as necklaces or bracelets. Or the marshmallowness of yellow chicks that came in an Easter basket. My particular favorite is orange slices; all that sugar, with a citrus overlay...

We got our candy from the candy store, that also sold cigars. It was a log cabin, on Main Street, in Gloucester Courthouse. There were cinnamon fireballs, and butterscotch candies, and wax bottles filled with flavored syrup. A cheerful, old man behind the counter would fill a sack of candy for us, for half of a dollar. Then a modern 'drugstore' opened up down the road, and the candy store disappeared.

Where this is all going, I don't know. But I will let the last of the chocolate go, and not buy anymore. This apartment is truly, a great deal like the Manse, and the old, familiar furniture passed down through the family, is arranged as if my Mother had visited while I was moving, and set each piece down where she saw fit. It is as if the pieces themselves, had come home.