Love in a Candy Box

a busy day in the kitchen

Love in a Candy Box

My father was a romantic.
He loved my mother dearly and he loved her mother, who lived with us most of my life, very much also. He showed such a great deal of respect for her and for his own parents and as my maternal Grandmother said.."He is better to me than 20 sons".
My father was a scientist who for his own reasons later opened a soda fountain/ice cream shop that eventually became a small stationary store in a tiny town, selling stationary to local businesses and cards and school supplies.
He took a beating money wise from malls and the big stationers.
But he was honest to a fault and ever the romantic who learned constantly.
 He would bring home boxes of candy to my mother and grandmother sometimes after work.

Once, I remember him walking home without his brand new coat  because he had given it to the town homeless guy "Its only a block walk. It's not that cold out"He wore his old one from then on. It was just as good he said.  A candy box was  tucked under his arm for Mother.  He sat down to dinner as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

In my grandmothers bedroom , inside the closet on a shelf , were old candy boxes filled with her crochet work (she made fillet crochet that was amazing), news clippings of her friends deaths, births of grandchildren, marriages, etc., cards from holidays, mementos and tiny souvenirs of times past. One was used to house her "good gloves" and "my good scraves".

I once asked her why she saved all those boxes.
"Oh, " she said, "its a shame to waste things".
"Yes", I said, "but you could fit this all in one or two hat boxes".
She looked at me with those deep gray eyes , now half blind and said , "But there is so much love in these boxes".