peevish mama

I was picking through the wreckage of boots, school papers, backpacks, lone socks, disemboweled lunch boxes and half-way inside-out snow pants strewn across the floor of the mud room when I stumbled upon something. I found some crumpled up candy wrappers stuffed into one of the cubbies.Laffy Taffy. I’m no candy Nazi. I don’t particularly like candy for the most part, so I don’t carry around a lot of angst about it. There’s no love/hate, forbidden fruitness to it for me. Which is a round about way of saying that I let my kids eat candy in moderation pretty much whenever it happens to be around, which is not always, but sometimes. I don’t know. I just don’t think about it that much.  As long as we have no cavities, I’m cool.

What I do know is that the lime green Laffy Taffy wrapper signaled the dawn of a new era in our house: the secret life of candy. 

For a long time, I knew exactly what candy my kids were eating because it all came from me, or at least, through me. I either bought it, doled it out, saw it as we read through Valentines, or knew it came out of their Halloween pillow cases. As I turned the crinkly wrapper over in my hand I realized I couldn’t answer the simplest of questions: whose was this and how did they get it? When did they eat it and why didn’t they ask me? As sure as the wrapper was peeled off that candy, my kids are peeling off of me.

My older guys are out in the world. They’re gone at school all day, leading entire lives I know very little about. They’re on the bus, on the playground, in the halls - working it. Navigating, negotiating, hustling, trading, bluffing, posturing, lying, stealing.* Do you remember being a kid? You work hard for your money! It’s not easy. It’s not pretty. It’s a dog eat dog world, even for kids. Especially for kids, who are very early on in the journey of evolving from rude and selfish little brutes into compassionate and complete human beings. Kids are mean, man. 

Whose candy was this and how did they get it? A bet? A dare? How?

On the other hand, childhood isn’t necessarily something that unfolds with the Rocky soundtrack soaring in the background. It isn’t necessarily an after-school special from the seventies. It’s not all fisticuffs and pecking order – jeering and bullies. There is also plenty of sweetness and light and maybe some kid simply pulled the Laffy Taffy out of his coat pocket and gave it to Supergirl because they’re friends or he wants to be her friend. Maybe Saint James got it from his teacher for good behavior. Maybe he traded his Granola Bites at lunch. Who knows? The point is, I don’t. 

The secret life of candy. The candy is beside the point (at least until the candy becomes something really naughty like cigarettes or booze). The point is the secret life – countless glances, exchanges, high fives, jokes, giggles, stories, shoulder buts, rivalries, embarrassments and slights to which I have not been privy. Saint James and Supergirl are out there fending for themselves, figuring out who they are and how they want to walk through this world and not only am I not helping them with it, I’m not even seeing it. Could it be true that I have given them most of what I will need to give them by the age of five? 

So Saint James and Supergirl eat a little candy I don’t know about from time to time. No biggie. But soon they will be those high school kids at Dairy Queen, eating whole meals I won’t know about. And there will be mothers with little kids eating nearby, sneaking shy peeks at them while they jostle and flirt and refill their Cokes and text and twirl their hair and drum their fingers on the tables and laugh and share ear buds and go about their lives – quite apart from their mothers.  

Soon, that will be them. I’ve got the proof stuffed in my jeans pocket.

*I sincerely hope not lying and stealing and I sincerely believe not lying and stealing, but I would not bet my favorite pair of boots on not lying and stealing because, well, if you see a roll of Smarties fall out of a seventh grader’s pocket and you pick it up, is it really stealing?