It was a hectic evening after the basketball game. I just had to run into Walmart to get a few things, but I was hungry so more things started to pile in my cart than were on the list. As I walked down the Christmas aisle looking for a gingerbread house my eyes were drawn to a green square box, "Old Fashioned Ribbon Candy."
Immediately I picked it up, saying, "We always had ribbon candy for Christmas when I was a kid." Without having to purchase it, I could remember the taste and texture of the hard candy. My memory was both fond and truthful. Reminiscing the way it sweetly melted in my mouth but frowning as I recalled the way it would cut my tongue every time on a rough patch. The sugary flavor would then be tainted by the sting of the cut and the salty taste of the blood the candy had produced.
Almost instantly I was transported to my Great Grandma Chase’s house. It was a little white square house on the corner of an old street. My most distant memories are of all four of us children sitting on the gold colored davenport. At each visit, six little dogs yapped and nipped at our heels from their hiding spot under the couch. Luckily I was too little for my feet to hit the ground.
I remember studying this ancient woman named Great Grandma. She always had a smile on her face and seemed oblivious to her nipping dogs terrifying us. I stared at her gray and black hair that resembled a giant rose the way it curled around her face in big waves that never moved.On the side of her hairdo she had a sparkling barrette holding the immovable hair in place.
She was the first person I would meet who owned a lava lamp. In her little living room the four of us would quietly stare at it while avoiding the dogs and drowning out the adult chatter. Visiting Great Grandma seemed to take an eternity, but the purple Lava bobbing up to the top in a waxy liquid ball transfixed our attention.
At some point in the adult conversation, Great Grandma would ask if we would like some candy. This would brighten all of our weary bodies after trying to sit and be good for so long. So off the couch, we bravely jumped and lined up in the narrow entryway to the kitchen. On a shelf too high for me to reach Great Grandma had Old fashioned Ribbon candy stored in a green glass jar.
It never failed, I would always hear from the living room Mom calling out, “We always had ribbon candy for Christmas when I was a kid.” If the truth were told, the candy stuck to the bottom of this green glass jar might have been that old. The red ribbon candy would be stuck in a ball with raspberry candies and green little lime flavored sticks. David, as the oldest of the four, would get the privilege of breaking off the pieces for the rest of us to eat. Even though the candy was brightly colored I was always a little bit frustrated with the taste.
All I can compare it to is biting into a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich only to discover it is peanut butter and raspberry jelly. With nosed crinkled up, I would keep eating it, after all, the lava lamp and the ribbon candy were the only highlights of this eternally long visit, but I was disappointed.
Over the years of my early childhood, I would repeat the same routine, stare at the lava lamp eat ribbon candy and wait. It is hard for the young to understand the importance of sitting in the room with their oldest relatives. Individuals that blazed the trail of life before them.
I learned as I sat in those visits that I inherited the gap between my front teeth from Great Grandma. I also shared the same long-fingered hands and love for art. I was too young to know that she was a dreamer, always thinking up a new dream. Regardless if I knew it then or not, I shared more than ribbon candy with my Great Grandmother or even DNA I was the carrier of her story.
She thought once that she would like to have a family, but could she see into the future to the great grand-daughter that would come and sing to her as she lay in the hospital in her 90's struggling for every breath. I will never forget the gleam in her eye as I sang for her then. Her life was almost spent, but her story carried on. I am sure in her youth she could not picture such a day.
Now as a mother of three I have moments where my mind drifts to Great Grandma. I wonder what her life was like when she was my age. I wonder what her dreams were then. I wonder what she would tell me when times are hard. Perhaps that is why my mother took the time to bring her four little children to sit in the cramped space to share a corner of the room with her grandmother. To take in life from her grandmother's point of view.
Putting the Old Fashioned Ribbon Candy back on the shelf I smiled at the thought of Great Grandma Chase, the memory of her is enough.
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