Spearmint Memories

I sat there for the longest time, staring at the little round spearmint hard candy on my desk . It was still jacketed in the thin, squeaky. slick plastic wrapper, but it just sat there staring back at me. The green lines around its outer edges were all uneven, meaning this wasn't one of the name brand candies I had before me, but one filled with imperfections - much like my own childhood. It had come from the candy dish I keep on my desk and always make sure is full. It's something I learned from him.

He had a large crystal candy dish on his desk that would pleasantly ring with a high pitch crystal chime when it opened. It was impossible to open that candy dish without it making noise. I think my father once told me it had been a wedding gift to him and my mother many years before. Rarely did I ever see it in the house as a child. It was always on my father's desk at work, as long as he had one.

I used to sit at his desk while he would be off working. Sometimes for hours I would play solitaire on his computer. Other times I would draw pictures on lined notepads. Occasionally I'd even do my homework. Those days were very rare, the days I'd visit my father's office, but every time I was there I always would ask permission and have a spearmint. With it resting in my mouth I'd suck air between my teeth and feel like I had the freshest breath in the world.

My father didn't like peppermints. No, that candy dish was always filled to the brim with spearmint candies. He would eventually finish his work and we'd pile up in that old Dodge Ram Charger that shared almost my entire childhood, and we'd trundle off down the road toward home. My mother would likely be waiting there with dinner - probably a tuna noodle casserole or homemade lasagna.

We haven't been a part of one another's lives for a great many years now, and there are days I'd give almost anything to go back in time to when I would sit at his desk and wait for him to finish his work so we could go home. I knew even as a young child that I would never look at a spearmint hard candy without thinking about my father and remembering some pleasant moment we shared. Those moments were few; perhaps entire too few, but they existed. I truly loved my father. I still do. He's my father, after all.

I opened the slick, unmarked wrapper and slid the spearmint onto my waiting tongue. I closed my eyes and the memories flooded through my brain. It was everything I always remembered it to be. I never cared much for Spearmint.

never liked Spearmint all that much..