Roz WarrenI’m turning into my grandmother. How do I know? I’ve developed a taste for individually wrapped hard candy, a treat I always associated with her and never cared for myself. Until now.
I always preferred chocolate. Chocolate bars as a kid, and then treats like malted milk balls and raisin clusters as I got older.
When I was a kid, there was always a candy dish at my grandma’s house, but I never went near it. Why? It held only hard candy. You had to unwrap them and they took forever to eat. Why, I wondered, didn’t grandma fill that dish with the good stuff? Chocolate!
Now I finally get it.
On a recent trip to California, I bought a box of Sees hard candies at the airport gift shop. I had a five-hour flight ahead of me and I figured it was something I could eat while wearing a mask.
And — surprise! I really enjoyed them. The fact that it takes forever to eat one is a plus. Pop it in your mouth and you’ve got something sweet to savor for the next five minutes. Not only that but hard candy never melts or gets stale.
I’ve been enjoying “grandma candy” ever since.
When I posted on Facebook that at age 66 I’d finally acquired a taste for the candy that my grandma used to love, I learned from my friends’ responses that I’m not alone:
Me too! Just in the last year — I even took out my grandmother’s candy dish to keep them in.
I’m with you. Werthers Rule!
My grandmother liked Brach’s peppermints and kept them in a covered candy dish.
Mine kept them in a glass candy dish too. It must be one of those unwritten laws.
One of these days I’ll have to pick *my* dish! It’s obviously a rite of passage. Maybe on the day I start collecting Social Security?
I have my mom’s candy dish with the candy still in it. She died 26 years ago.
I love Werther’s! They keep me from snacking, but, yeah, my husband calls me “grandma” when he sees me with them.
My grandma had butterscotch candies. She taught our dog to unwrap them and would toss them to the dog as a treat whenever she grabbed one.
My theory? There’s a candy for every stage of life, and I’m currently entering the hard candy phase. My grandma always had a few wrapped candies in her purse. So did many of her contemporaries. And now? So do I.
I recently read this great quote by writer, scholar and humorist Gina Barreca:
Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.
To which I’d like to add:
And once we hit sixty? Add a taste for Werthers to that list.