Thin Mints

My mother has a way of making chocolate last.   Each Christmas my in-laws send my parents a box of chocolates.   Weeks later my mother has told her how she and my father were still enjoying the chocolate, having a piece each for dessert after dinner.  

When I was a child I remember going to my mother’s office on the weekends or over holidays while she got work done.   Any time we had a vacation she’d go into work before returning the following Monday to do some catching up.   I always loved going to her office.  

She was in a big building on the campus of the college I’d eventually go to.   The building had a large rotunda in the middle.   I would make paper airplanes and go to the third floor, flying them down and seeing which model would fly the longest.  

I’d come back into her office, hungry and ask if there was anything to eat.   Sometimes they had food left over in the refrigerator from events they’d had the prior week, but often times the only thing to eat was Captain’s Crackers.   I learned to love those buttery crackers as a child and still eat them today.  

Barring food in the refrigerator, she would usher me back into her office, open a drawer in her credenza and pull out a thin, rectangular box of thin mints.   The disk-shaped peppermint sugar covered in chocolate that would melt in my mouth.   It was gone all too soon.   I could have easily eaten the whole box, but one was the limit.  

I don’t think I ever went to her office when she didn’t have a box of thin mints.   Today, in their home in the mountains, she keeps a bowl full of peppermint patties.   We’ve had to move the dish once my children discover it, because like me, they would happily eat them all.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wants to be two things for Halloween.   He’s already selected his costume, which I’ve ordered, but he wants to be something different for the neighborhood party before trick-or-treating.   I told him he’d have to make a second costume if he wanted to go that route.   He’s thinking about his options, going through the costume bin in their closet tonight and wearing a Spider Man costume he grew out of two years ago.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to lunch with my daughter’s braillest from last year today.   Mrs. Aagaard came home with us to illustrate a story my daughter and son wrote.   My daughter had typed it up in braille and we were ready to watch Mrs. Aagaard illustrate it with the Tactile Graphics Kit that makes raised patterns and lines on paper so a blind person can feel a drawing.   We had a nice afternoon together and I got a lot of good tips on learning braille as a bonus.