She loved the taste of
marzipan. The grainy almondy sweet burst of flavor was her favorite. It was more than something to eat though, so much more. It came in so many shapes, so many colors. During
Easter, it was yellow chicks, soft brown bunnies, pink kissed lambs and little colorful eggs.
Valentine's Day, it was hearts dipped in
chocolate or sometimes
cupid aiming his bow with his tiny bottom peaking out from a droopy diaper.
Christmas, it was
Hansel and Gretel, it was the Witch with the cotton ball hair, it was peaches and oranges and bananas and grapes and apples and oh every kind of fruit imaginable piled up on tiny little plates next to the
Gingerbread House. Each piece carefully brushed with food coloring, just so. Little pieces of marzipan shapes hid on the house cemented with sugar piping waiting to be discovered by small hands eager for a treat. Marzipan pigs, sheeps and cows grazed outside the candy house. It was a marzipan lover's dream.
Sometimes...she got to help MAKE the little figures with her grandmother...those were the best times. Sitting at the table with the big yellow sunflowered tablecloth in the sunlight, listening to classical music and grandmother humming all jumbled up together. Smelling the 4711 cologne that her grandmother always wore as she leaned over her shoulder to guide young fingers. Molding and shaping, sneaking tiny bites, pinching and pulling, swiping more nibbles, and finally with careful brush strokes, tinting the shades and the shadows in just the right places so they would look "real". It was a warm quiet time, just her and her grandmother, making something from nothing, like magic.
Her grandmother would slip any extra confection into her pocket as she hugged and kissed her goodbye for the trip home. She would wink and put her finger to her lips when the girl's mother wasn't looking. "Our secret", she said with her eyes. The girl would pat her pocket and smile.
Both her and her grandmother knew it would be gone before she returned home. In the backseat of her mother's Volkswagen, she would close her eyes, smell the remnants of her grandmother's perfume on her shoulder, slowly savor the taste of almonds, hum a little, and bask in the afterglow her grandmother's love.