Thanksgiving had passed, and the Christmas season was in full swing. Lights festooned the neighborhood; and stores, filled with Christmas trappings, were abuzz with activity. I meandered through a drug store while waiting for a prescription. As I passed through the candy aisle, the shelves stocked to the edges with bags and boxes of candy, samplers, assortments, clusters, fudge, and chocolate covered everything, I saw the Queen Annes. During the previous week I was asking myself, “Who was my dad?” to describe him to someone who had not known him. Seeing the candy incited riot in my memory.
Since I was a small boy, I gave my dad a pound of chocolate covered cherries at Christmas. The annual ritual was not to be repeated for the first time in nearly half a century. Dad’s birthday celebrated posthumously had just passed, and my emotions, brimming equal to the store shelves, spilled over. All those years of sustaining such a tradition, all the wrapping paper, yards of ribbon, bows, gift tags, and transparent tape, used to excess in the early years, unraveled from my memory bank.
I remembered walking on icy streets to the five and dime store to use my allowance to buy his special present. Later, I had the proceeds from a paper route to underwrite the cost. Other years, I went to Jada O’Neil’s candy shop just two blocks from my house. “The Candy Shop,” was actually a before-its-time convenience store complete with groceries, pinball machine, and jukebox and dance floor in the back where as teens we gathered after school. There were the years during which my father smoked a pipe that I gave him a pound of Mixture 79, but I still got him the Queen Annes.
As I grew older and he grew beyond the pipe, I enjoyed watching him open that box of candy as much as I did as a child. He knew what was in the box even during the years I thought as many youngsters that it was cool to disguise it in a variety of packages. At times I put it in multiple boxes just to prolong his fun and my joy. He always feigned surprise and thanked me profusely for my thoughtfulness. Eventually I was able to afford more substantial presents, but I still got him the cherries if just for the nostalgic gesture of an era gone by. What a wonderful memory of him I had uncovered.
It was not until the previous Christmas after my mother had passed and I especially wanted to sustain tradition that Dad in his quiet, offhand way finally disclosed to me the unimaginable. “You know, Michael, I have never liked Queen Anne chocolates.”
“What?” I was flabbergasted. “What did you do with them?”
“Your mother ate them.”
Mom had eaten them all. It never occurred to me that in all that time I had never seen Dad eat any of the candy. Why hadn’t he told me? Then I realized that the Case of the Queen Anne Chocolates was solved. It was a case in which for once it was more blessed to receive than to give. Not until that moment did I know how much fun he actually had all those years. He had fun allowing me the pleasure of giving my gift to him. What a hoot!
Mom had eaten them all. It never occurred to me that in all that time I had never seen Dad eat any of the candy. Why hadn’t he told me? Then I realized that the Case of the Queen Anne Chocolates was solved. It was a case in which for once it was more blessed to receive than to give. Not until that moment did I know how much fun he actually had all those years. He had fun allowing me the pleasure of giving my gift to him. What a hoot!
Who was my father? He was a man, who for nearly fifty years would happily accept a gift for which he had no taste. He would graciously open the same gift each year just to sow the seeds of joy in the heart of a small boy regardless of his age.
The torch has passed to my sons who began giving me the same box of candy. Luckily I like chocolate covered cherries because I think I am destined to receive them. Just the same, I bought a box of Queen Annes, and I savored each one.
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