Old and Delicious

Mama and I went and got our (respective) taxes done today. What a relief. Especially since Josh and I are actually getting some money back! I didn't know what to expect. I was prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised.

While we were sitting there waiting for the accountant to finish up one of our forms, Mama started looking for a mint. She always has mints. I only ever have gum. I don’t really do the mint thing, and she doesn’t do the gum thing. So, if we don't have our own stash, we're kind of out of luck.

Anyway, she’s searching through her purse for a mint. She finds an orange tin of Icebreakers Sours. Tangerine and some other sour flavor. I couldn’t help but laugh about it. It’s this neon colored tin with bright, metallic colors on the label, obviously for someone in a younger age group than herself. She didn’t quite understand what was so funny about it, and it wasn’t that it was really all that funny, it’s just that I didn’t expect her to have something like that. She’s a grandma. A grandma apparently enjoying very sour mints with flavor crystals.

So then she rummages some more and finds the small container of green tic-tacs she’s got down in there. She shows them to me as if to prove that she does indeed have things that an older woman should have in her purse. And I do realize how awful that just sounded, Mama. "Older woman?" Yeesh. You know what I mean.

Finally, the very old and surely very soft and yummy peppermint emerges. You know, the one your mom used to pass you during church and you had to open it as quietly as possible. The kind that doesn’t have defined stripes anymore; it’s all just kinda pink. And while opening it quietly (yeah, right. Is that possible?) you make a sticky mess on your hands trying to open the thing and get it in your mouth. The entire mint is stuck to the wrapper. It's a gooey mess. Now you don’t quite know what to do with the wrapper. There's no trash can. Thankfully, your mom usually just takes it from your hands and diposes of it somehow. Magic, I guess. And now you get to chew and chew and chew on the wonderfully old mint.

As for the sticky fingers, I don't really remember. There was probably just a nice little sticky spot on my Sunday dresses every week.


Our little "mint moment" today just makes me kind of wonder what it will be that Bennett remembers about me down the road. I don't see myself starting to carry peppermints in my purse. Who eats those anymore, anyway? Maybe he'll remember always being handed the piece of gum that has come out of the pack and been carried around in the bottom of my purse for some time, the wrapper loosening and starting to open just a little bit, letting the dirt and lint and ink from pens get on the gum. The piece that you find when you think you're out. You look at it and think, do I eat this? Can I pick off the gross parts and eat it? Should I just throw it away and do without? Or, do I just close my eyes, pop it in real quick and try not to think about whatever that brown spot was?

Sometimes you really need gum. Or a mint.