Love and Candy Corns

It was cold and dark here Thursday. All through the night the drops came down hard. The rainy season is breaking through finally and downpours come and go with no warning. It was a good day to stay in and snuggle, which worked out since the two littlest ones were still snuffy and sick with colds.

So I made hot chocolate. Not the Kenyan version of “drinking chocolate,” but  Swiss Miss with those adorable little ‘marshmallows’ in it.

Seems obvious, right?
Change in weather, cozy drink in hand.

I even baked up a Trader Joes Pumpkin Bar mix. From the box.

Again, obvious to want to make the house smell like fall and warm things up a bit with the oven and the comfort of the food. Right?

However, that was a bit decadent for me. A signal of a change in attitude. Because, I am here to confess publicly, I am a hoarder.

Not in the traditional maze of newspapers or 27 cats kind of way, but in certain sentimental ways. Especially with food.

This became embarrassingly obvious to me when Mom visited this summer (!) and helped us move to our current house, only to unearth a giant bag of candy corn candies that she had thoughtfully sent us the previous fall so we’d have a fun taste of home.

A gallon-sized bag of candy corns in June, with very few missing. Eep.

Don’t get me wrong, we like candy corns and the girls LOVE them, and I guess I really couldn’t bear to see them go. So they were rationed, nevermind how gross other people probably thought it was that the girls could munch on a few (only a few!) in springtime, or that I snuck them into the summer snacks of popcorn when they played with our new neighbors (again, embarrassing, but it feels good to finally admit it out loud!).

It’s not that I’m obsessed with candy corns. Really. They are just a good metaphor for other things I’ve held onto and brushed dust off (pumpkin candles anyone? Just got those babies out of the decorating box!) instead of enjoying them in their proper time.

For the record, you absolutely cannot get Swiss Miss hot chocolate packs here, and there is literally no other place on earth like Trader Joe's; enough said.

So maybe it’s because they are rare? These precious gems of our pantry. But I don’t think that’s really it at all.

I decided to share these special treats on Friday at the monthly non-teaching spouses get-together at our place. This has been a time that I’ve tried to set aside so that the new people have connections to people who are already established (Although I barely fit into this category) and we can all check in with one another and lend an ear, or advice, or support as needed. We sat together and talked honestly about what it feels like to be overseas, what it’s like to feel far away as the holidays approach and what we think about this crazy life of an expat. One thing came to be obvious to me, it hit me hard: I’ve been hoarding these little glimpses of “home” because they feel like a lifeline to me when things are uncertain. They provide a link back to our life back in California. They are comforting and they are also a stumbling block for me.

I asked if any place will ever feel like “home” again. Some days I miss our loved ones so much that my whole body aches with loss. Some days I love this place more than I thought possible. It’s hard to balance both realities in my hands at the same time. One of the other women had a wise observation: the people who thrive, no matter where they are, are the ones who embrace wherever it is and make that place home, for as long as they happen to be there. I feel that she can speak about this with some authority since she grew up here, moved back to America for university, came back here to teach, moved back to America for a while with small children and her family is now here again.

I realized that I was keeping old food around as a talisman. As proof that I had ties to my “old” life. As a buffer against the reality that things here must be made from scratch or that certain treats don’t exist this side of the world. As an experience of the fall season when the weather here is anything but cool and ready for comfort foods.

Saving something and never enjoying it does not bring joy. It does not necessarily become more sacred the older it gets, especially if it is something that has an expiration date (well, maybe candy corns break this rule…). But these things were sent with love. We have been showered with generosity and it touches me so much that sometimes I cry with the beauty of it. I don’t think it’s the sending that I think I am inadvertently trying to honor. It is the sender. It is being remembered, the fact that we were thought of. That having them serves as a visible reminder that we are loved from the other side of the world.

Keeping them made me feel that by living here I was not rejecting my past, my loved ones, or a way of life. I am slowly trying to accept that being happy in one place isn’t an automatic rejection of another. It is finding balance and sometimes accepting the sense of loss that naturally comes, especially around this time of year. (I think this is true whether you live across the country, across the world, or even across a bank account for a plane ticket to the next state.)

So this time? We’ve eaten all the candy corns that Mom sent. We’re having “real” American hot chocolate whenever we feel cold (or want to pretend to). We are baking up those mixes and mac-n-cheeses. From someone who can fairly be described as a foodie on most days, it’s funny that it is the things of comfort, the American packaged foods that seem to bring out my craziest food hoarding tendencies.

My new friends were amazed, they kept exclaiming over the treats. They appreciated the rare flavors, but most of all they were touched by the gesture of sharing them. They couldn’t believe that we would serve our special coffee to others. But for me, it was the only thing that makes sense. Seeing their enjoyment was so much better than covertly savoring it all myself, or letting it sit on a shelf for “someday.” I could share a piece of “old home” in our “new home,” and it was in the sharing that those things were truly enjoyed.  And although I continue to wrestle with balancing two “homes” in my mind, it felt so right to combine the two. And this was wonderful. Because I know that we are loved from many points on this earth, and we send our love out in just as many directions.

And marshmallows that have been waiting patiently in the pantry? Your days are numbered before we roast you into s’mores with friends as we celebrate Ainsley’s birthday together in a few weeks.