I was finishing my Christmas shopping at the grocery store just a mile from my house. The check out line wasn’t particularly long but the person in front of me needed a price check. So there I was, browsing the candy like a kid when I saw it.
Mentos.
I love the fruity ones, but I usually default to the minty ones since they seem to have a purpose outside of being basically candy.
Generally I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it but since it was a few days before Christmas I was already thinking about my favorite church service of the year, Christmas Eve by candlelight, and therefore I was thinking of the church I grew up in. Which meant I was again seven or eight years old, sitting in the third, or was it fourth? pew from the front, next to Mimi.
She always had everything in her purse. Name it, she had it: clippers, tiny notebooks, pens, pencils, rose gold lipstick, Winterfresh gum, maybe even a small pack of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. She was the consummate old lady with a carpet bag. And she had Mentos. Just like the ones in the grocery store.
This was my, our, first Christmas without her. She’d been declining for years but I always like to remember her at her peak Mimi phase – taking us shopping, making us food, cuddling in bed and watching Mary Tyler Moore. And some days I wish I could go back to that. She provided a safe loving space for me for the majority of my formative years.
It’s so interesting how many days I can’t remember what I had for breakfast by noon, but I see one tiny thing at a busy place and a flood of memories, feelings, and grief overcome me even for a second. Memory is a funny thing.
mercies per mile 