I get my sweet tooth from my Mama, and anyone who knows me will vouch for its ferocious intensity.  I crave sweets:  cakes, chocolates, candies, soda, pie, you name it.  In the summertime, ice cream is a daily requirement.  If not for this infernal sweet tooth, which demands regular tribute, I’m sure I’d be the size of a Victoria’s Secret model.  But when I think of all the wonderful things I’ve eaten over the past thirty-something years, Heidi Klum can keep The Body.  I’ll take what has amounted to essentially unlimited quantities of deliciousness.

My Mama loved sweet things.  She kept chocolates in the house in a little wicker basket in the kitchen.  She drank so much Diet Dr. Pepper that we should have purchased stock in the company.  At any given time, we had Mexican wedding cookies, Chips Ahoy, Nutter Butters, ice cream sandwiches, or Little Debbie Fudge Brownies stashed somewhere in our house, waiting for a craving to strike.  I was raised on sugary breakfast cereal, PopTarts, and occasionally, ice cream for Sunday night dinner.  (In defense of my mom, I should note that I am currently a healthy weight for my height and did not get my first cavity until I was well into my twenties. I was raised on brussels sprout and the necessity for green vegetables as well.  But that’s another story.)  Eight and a half months pregnant with me in August, Mama claimed she survived the sweltering summer by eating popsicles non stop.  In the last year of her life, when chemotherapy made it difficult to regulate her body temperature, she ate popsicles again by the boxful, forcing the orange ones (too sour, she said) on me or my sisters and sharing the others with her dog Domino.  The last solid food she ever ate was a Baby Ruth candy bar.  Sugar permeated my childhood and is something I will always associate with Mama.  One thing my childhood never lacked was sweetness, both material and intangible.

Sometime in my late elementary and early middle school years, Mama went through a Gobstoppers phase.  She consumed them in mass quantities, at work, at home, on road trips.  The end table next to her spot on the sofa–known as Mama’s table–always had a box of them on it, and sometimes, if you handled the box quietly, you could sneak one out while she was in the bedroom doing her makeup or tending to something in another part of the house.  She purchased them in bulk, sending us into the drug stores of our small town to buy ten or twelve dollars’ worth in one fell swoop.  She’d watch the sales circulars for sales and stock up, the extras kept on top of the refrigerator out of our reach until she required another box.  Her friends at work teased her about the obsession, even, later, bringing her boxes of Everlasting Gobstoppers in the hospital.

I don’t know what particular allure Gobstoppers held.  They were never personally my favorite, since I lacked the patience for anything that couldn’t be chewed up straight away, and everyone knows biting into a Gobstopper without letting it sit invites dental peril.  But Mama loved them, and I remember lying in bed at night waiting for sleep and hearing the candies rattle in the box as she lifted it from the coffee table and shook those brightly colored candies out.  Occasionally there were escapees, and cleaning the space behind the couch, end table, or bedroom dresser always yielded one or two of them, dusty marbles that had heretofore evaded capture.  Willy Wonka may have invented them, but Everlasting Gobstoppers will always be Mama’s.

I say that to say this.  My little sister knew what she was doing when she packed up her latest care package.  In the midst of ibuprofen and DayQuil, leggings from Target (which may merit their own post later on), pictures of my niece and nephew and all manner of other things I consider essential to civilized life that aren’t available in Korea, there was a box of Gobstoppers.  She sent me our Mama, whole and healthy and young, in a box of drug store candy.  She sent me the smell of my mom’s perfume as she got ready, the pleasure of sitting in the front seat on a road trip and getting to control the radio, the warmth of Mama’s side when she let you snuggle next to her on the couch.  My sister sent more than just candy.  She sent me sweetness.