As I opened my freezer and picked up the box, I fully expected the weight of the sugar, fat, and general deliciousness that I had been craving would, naturally, resist my urges.
Instead, my hand launched up to the wire bars of the shelf above it, quite possibly sustaining a bruise that would slowly develop as I stood
there and fumed.
Why doesn't anyone in the house throw out empty boxes?
It was a rhetorical complaint that could as quickly ricochet and cover me
in sickly sweet irony.
As if they didn't come from me - my children! Don't they know, I asked the air quite plaintively, how much of their own gratification is lost by this lazy omission to the effort of recycling?
Don't they understand that if I knew the icy fudge-ribboned delicacies had been scarfed or the cream-filled treasure boxes had been scraped to barren that I would dutifully replace them?
Who do they think does the shopping?
OK sometimes their dad ... but he never buys the good stuff.
I'm the one buying the food that I wish they wouldn't eat and hiding it in plain sight.
The temptations I face in the middle of the night would not weigh as heavily in the morning when I can't face the scale.
As I stand there holding the box, letting the cold of the freezer escape, I can't help but think of younger me.
I wish I didn't know where I had tucked the dollar store cookies and the fun-sized candies to
pulverize one at a time and sprinkle on top of a mountain of ice cream.
Oh, the rub that I should be so vexed.
Wasn't my college mini-fridge stocked with empty containers?
Milk, eggs, orange juice containers all rang hollow.
"Why don't you throw these out," asked a laughing guest with an unquenched thirst for vitamin C.
I just shrugged my shoulders and admitted I didn't want my oft-visiting parents to notice the cupboard was bare.
It wasn't so much that I didn't want them to worry as much as I didn't want them to judge my choices.
The shame of which I realize I might not have outgrown.
No comments:
Post a Comment