Melancholy in the Cracker Aisle
September 15, 2014
So there we were in the cracker/cookie aisle at Target and all of a sudden, there it was on a high shelf. That blue box of memories and melancholy and grief. The box of Chicken In A Biskit.
This ALWAYS makes me think of Grandma Jane (who died 22 years ago) and Jen (6 years ago). Any time Jen and I reminisced about GrandmaJane, Chicken in a Biskit would inevitably come up. When GJ was married to Grandpa O, there was an open kitchen shelf that had clear containers of crackers. Grandpa O always had Diamond Brand Soda Crackers (Gawd I love those!) and then that blue box. We loved those salty chickeny crackers. They were like a special treat because mom didn't buy them.
Now, anytime in the last 22 years I've seen that box, I would call Jen or email her or something. And she would do the same to me. If she were still here, I would have simply texted her a picture with "GRANDMA JANE!" as the message and moved along.
What makes it so sad is that Jen is simply the ONLY Person on this planet that I shared this with. It's one little thing of many that we shared, of course, but one of those things that makes me miss the goofy fun stuff you have with a sibling, whether your politics or religion or whatever aligns or not. We could have disagreed about something in the news and not talked for a day but we could always, ALWAYS laugh or at least smile about Chicken in a Biskit.
It made me happy and sad to see that box on Saturday. Plus I was at Target with Harper staying cool and buying ingredients to make these cute cookie sandwiches:
(From this website-can't wait to try the pizza crescents!) (And also big ups to Melissa for pointing me to that website in the first place.) (And no, that is not my picture of the finished product, ours were not so perfect.)
Harper loves sprinkles, BTW.
I wanted to tell Jen all about how fun it was to try these things now that I have a daughter. She did it all when Grace and Matthew were little and It was fun to be at their parties and eat the sunflower cake made out of twinkies. (I did kinda tease her about making a cake with TWINKIES!) But I can't. Yes, there are plenty of friends and family to talk about all this with. But it's not the same.
For example, I found this while doing research on a script I'm working on:
I would have instantly texted or emailed this to Jen and said "REMEMBER THESE???" (I did post on facebook and tagged Betsy and Sloane, cuz I knew they would know.) But then Jen would have picked up the phone (probably) and we would have talked about life on Oahu before we moved to Maui. Where was that machine? Longs Drugs in Kahala Mall across from the Yum Yum tree? Remember the Yum Yum Tree? And on and on and on.
But I don't get to and it makes me really sad. Not all the time, mind you, but when I have a chance encounter in the cracker aisle to a touchstone of my childhood and the one person I can talk to about it is no longer there, that is a deep dark bummer.