I don’t have many vices. I don’t smoke or do drugs. I rarely drink, and when the occassion calls for it I only consume alcohol in moderation. A glass of wine, a cosmo or two and I’m ready for bed. I love good food, but since I rarely take time to cook anything beyond basic weekly survival fare, overeating isn’t an issue. I’m not a big shopper so I don’t have to worry about dropping thousands on the latest bag and I don’t go to enough fancy receptions to warrant a closet full of ball gowns.

But when it comes to sweets, I can’t control myself.

I’m not talking about baked goods. Yes, I love a moist chocolate chip cookie, a chewey double chunk brownie, and I’ve never passed up a lemon tarts when it appears on a menu. Years ago, at my sister-in-law’s high school graduation, I ate so much white layer cake I was dizzy with nausea and nearly threw up on the sprawling prep school lawn. And while I know my consumption of baked goods occassionally verges on the extreme, it’s nothing compared to my craving for candy. I’m not talking about bars of fine Swiss chocolate or the artisan specialties they peddle down at the Ferry Building. You can keep your delicate handmade caramels with sea salt, your dark truffles with a dash of cayenne pepper. I’m taking about straight up processed sugar–the hard stuff–the kind of candy doctors warn triggers inflamation of the joints and taxes you kidneys.

When I was a kid, my favorite store was 7/11. We lived about a mile away from one and I used to walk there on summer afternoons. I’d massage the quarter in my pocket the whole way, imagining the packs of PopRocks and Everlasting Gobstoppers, the Zots and Bottlecaps.

When I was in college, I used to eat a quarter pound bag of M&M’s every night. When W and I got married, he used to marvel at my ability to eat candy while I slept. I’d lay on my back in our bed, one hand cupped at my chest while the other hand popped pieces of candy in my mouth at regular intervals. You think I’m lying? As W. He’ll confirm my story.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a “favorite candy,” a single type of candy I consume exclusively until I make myself sick or run through the store’s stock. Once, I ate Lemon Heads every day for six month’s straight. The only reason I stopped was because I started to wear the enamel off my teeth. I’ve eaten Sugar Babies–those little balls of caramel that I understand originally were shaped to resemble little black babies–by the pound. About a year ago, I was munching on a mouthful of Sugar Babies when I felt something come loose in my mouth and realized, to my horror, that my molar had cracked and I’d pulled out a portion of a filling!

York Peppermint Patties, Gummie Bears, See’s peppermint twists, Jawbreakers, Kraft Caramels–I’ve been obsessed with all of them over the years.

My current fixation is with Brach’s Kentucky Mints. I simply can’t eat enough of them. I consume them by the bag.

This particular candy isn’t new to me. My habit started years ago, back in our old neighborhood. With the exception of the spoonfuls I used to nibble on my way out of our favorite Thai restaurant, I hadn’t seen them sold in bulk. Then I spotted them on the candy display at our local market and bought a bag for old time’s sake. What a mistake. I was hooked. A small bit of saliva and the powdery outer coating dissolved on my tongue exposing the artificially flavored minty center which lay like a tiny pearl on my tongue.

At first I’d buy one bag a week and would treat myself to a small handful in the mid afternoon when I needed a boost. But pretty soon, I worked up a tolerance for the pure, sugary sweetness and found that I could work my way through a bag every other day. Within a few weeks, I found myself jonesing for Kentucky mints at random moments, and if I didn’t have a few before bedtime I was grouchy and short tempered. Sounds bad? It was. I can’t even tell you. In 1998, I almost DIED one day trying to feed my habit.

H was barely four, C wasn’t even crawling. It was a lovely summer afternoon, the girls and I were home alone and I was leaning against the kitchen counter, popping Kentucky Mints like they were Tick Tacks as I flipped through a J. Jill Catalog. The thing about Kentucky Mints is that they’re manageable as long as you don’t have too much spit in your mouth. That day, I wasn’t paying close enough attention and a bit of spit mixed with the powdered sugar coating and went down the wrong pipe. The mint flavor triggered a gag response in my windpipe and I started coughing. I spit out what remained of the candy but still couldn’t catch my breath. I was heaving, stumbling around the kitchen while baby C watched me from her high chair. I remember feeling my eyes bulge. I clutched my throat as the room started to spin and my vision grew blurry and I remember thinking, “Oh my God. I’m choking and my babies won’t have a mommy. No one can save me. I’m going to die right here on the kitchen floor and my gravestone will say that I was killed by fucking a Kentuck Mint.” Luckily, after a full minute of staggering around,–I’m not kidding, I stumbled out into the driveway–I managed to calm myself and take a breath.

So you see, this isn’t an addiction to take lightly. I’m playing with fire here. I know Kentucky Mints aren’t good for me. But like every other junkie out there, I can’t kick the habit. “Just quit!” you might say. “Don’t buy them any more.” My friends, it’s not possible. Believe me, I’ve tried. I see them hanging there on the candy rack at Calmart and I just can’t help myself. I have to buy at least one bag. Stashing them away in the back of the pantry doesn’t work. Even if I somehow forget they’re in there for a a day or two, I’ll eventually hear a voice in my head reminding me of the the temporary bliss that awaits me and I have to tear open the bag. I wake up twenty minutes later feeling like shit with powdered sugar on my clothes and minty drool seeping from the corner of my mouth.

About a month ago, I thought I might be able to kick. I’d single-handedly purchased every bag Calmat put out on the rack and had eaten them until my stomach was burning. I swore I had an ulcer. I was sure, absolutely positive they weren’t going to order any more for a while, and looked forward to taking a much needed break. I walked through the sliding door and, like always, scanned the candy display to see how many bags were left. There was only one. I actually laughed out loud with relief. My stuggle was almost over. At first I though, “To hell with this. I can resist. I won’t do it. Let some other sucker buy that last bag.” I hadn’t taken three steps into the produce section before I doubled back and ripped the last bag from the little hanger. But I swore that after I polished it off, I was finished. I’d kick Kentucky Mints for good.

So you can imagine my horror when I swung by Calmart this afternoon and they’d restocked the display. Ten fresh bags of Kentuck Mints were hanging there, the sheen on their green plastic packaging glistening under the florescent lights. I let out a defeated sigh and tossed two bags into my cart. Damn.

Then, to top off the insanity, who waltzes in an hour later with another bag? W! He’d swung by Calmart to pick up some parchment paper and thought he’d be a loving husband. God bless him. He doesn’t even recognize his role and an enabler.

So when you see me dressed in a fake fur jacket, thigh-high boots, with my behind hanging out of a pair of red leather hot pants, as I strut back and forth on the corner of California and Van Ness, or skulk along dark alley in the Tenderloin looking to turn a quick trick, don’t bother to call my name or make eye contact. Just know that I’ve lost the fight and given in to my addition. Friends, make sure my kids get to the bus on time and any of you out there who know how to comb black hair, please swing by every week or so and help my daughters out. Because if there’s anything worse than a black girl with ashy legs, it’s a black girl with ashy legs and a nappy head of hair–which is how my daughter will look if left to their own device. And if they ask what’s happened to their mother, why she hasn’t come home, just tell them how much I loved them, how hard I fought before I gave in, and that I tried to be a good mother.

13) You’re bending down sorting laundry and your daughter leans close, runs her hands over your hair and says, “I can see your scalp.”

I’ll be forty-two in a couple months, and while I’m comfortable with the rate at which I’m aging, there’s no denying things are well . . . shifting. Nothing is as tight or as perky as it use to be. So, in honor of my steady slide into midlife, I thought I’d start keeping a list of all the subtle and not so subtle ways life continues to remind me that I’m not twenty-five or even thirty-five anymore. I dedicate this and all future posts on this subject to H and C, who say that I need to write something funny. Here goes:

YOU KNOW YOU’VE HIT MID-LIFE WHEN . . .

1) your thirteen year old daughter tells you you need to wear a camisole in addition to a bra under that sheer top you thought was so cute because your nipples are showing.

2) when your daughters come at you with tweezers because they’ve made a game out of finding stray hairs on your neck and chin.

3) when your daughters barge into the bathroom the moment you step out of the shower, cup their hands under your buns like they’re holding silly puddy and squeal, “Mommy’s bottom is so jigggllleeeeee.”

4) when, after working out at the gym for straight two weeks, your oldest barges into the bathroom the moment you step out of the shower, punches your butt with her fists and says, “Hey! Wow, your bottom’s feels a little tighter. It’s not as jiggly as it was before.”

5) when you speak to your daughters in a sharper tone than usual and they look at you and ask, “are you on your period?”

6) when your daughter’s cell phone is cooler than yours.

7) when your daughters have to teach you how to use the text messaging option on your phone.

8)  when you don’t know how to erase the 40 text messages from your daughter than now jam your inbox.

9) when you have to ask your kids what the word “buttflap” means.

10) when you put on that pair of shoes you think are really cute and your daughters say you look like you’re about to go hiking.

11) when you realize that the woman staring back at you from the three-way, the one with the flabby knees and saddle bags, isn’t your mother. IT’S YOU!

12) when you go to Victoria’s Secret to buy new underwear and the young saleswoman doesn’t even slow down as she passes the thongs.

I’ll keep this list going as long as my ego and the little shred of dignity I’ve managed to salvage hold out.

Last Friday, I spoke to H’s English class about writing. Her teacher wrote to me a few weeks ago asking if I’d talk about my writing process, and I was delighted to accept the invitation.

It was an interesting experience getting my presentation ready. I pulled out all the old drafts of my novel, three binders worth of writing, combed through my research files, dug out my old audio tapes of interviews and video tapes of the sugar cane harvest. I rifled through craft books and selected quotes about revision. I even found an old tupperware container full of dirt I stole from a sugar cane field so that I could remember how the soil smelled.

All that gathering and compiling started me thinking about how long I’ve been at this writing business, how much of my time and my spirit I’ve invested in bringing this story to life. We’re talking hundred if not thousands of hours. Aside from the time I’ve put into raising the girls, I don’t think I’ve spent so much time on a one particular project in my life. But there it was, eight plus years of work, all boxed up and ready to be shared.

I come from a long line of teachers. Practically every woman on my mother’s side of the family is or was an educator. Until recently, even my sister was a college professor. But I never heard the call, never felt the urge to share my knowledge of anything with anyone other than my children.

So it came as a bit of a shock to discover how much I wanted those kids to share my love of everything writing related. I wanted them to swoon over Annie Proulx’s drop dead descriptions and ponder the question of why Debra Marquart strung the words of her poem together like laundry on a clothesline.

At first, I worried that all my junk would overwhelm them, that they’d look at my binders and pages of bad writing, the newspaper clippings and jar of dirt and think, “no way. I’ll do something else when I grow up. That looks like too much work.” Yes, there were a few kids in the class whose eyes glazed over fifteen minutes into my talk. A couple of the boys in the back row slumped over their notebooks, and two girls seated right in front of me thought I didn’t notice when they leaned forward so their hair shielded their faces as they rolled their eyes. But those weren’t the kids I was trying to reach anyway. I was talking to the kids who believe nothing feels and smells better the pages of a book, the kids who feel calm and powerful the moment they pick up a pencil and jot down the first lines of a story. Because that’s what I felt like all those years ago. Between Coach Flagler’s short story class during my junior year of high school and Charles Muscatine’s creative writing workshop in college, I knew what if felt like to be inspired by someone’s else’s love of the written word. Intoxicating doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling.
I knew I’d done my job when, at the end of my presentation, the girl to my left and reared back in her seat and declared, “Oh, I wish I could write right now.” That would have been enough. But as I was hauling my box out of the class, H leaned over and whispered, “thanks, mom. That was really good.”

I took the girls on an overnight adventure this week. We drove down the coast to visit some of the missions C is studying this year. As we stood in the sanctuary of San Juan Bautista, C looked up at the altar and noticed a bunch of statues–men dressed in what appeared to be skirts and suits of armor. I thought they were soldiers or maybe saints, but I didn’t know for sure.

“The on on the bottom looks like Robin Williams,” C said.

What does it mean that my child can stand on sacred ground and only reference pop culture icons? I would have been happy if she’d said statue was Jesus or John the Baptist. I’d even have taken Julius Caesar. But no.  Robin Williams as  Mrs. Doubtfire–that’s all she could come up with, which only confirmed that I’ve totally failed when it comes to religion.  Heaven help me.

A couple people have asked how my movie marathon went. I’m happy to report it was a total success. I watched movies from one o’clock in the afternoon until ten o’clock at night, on Saturday. The Kite Runner, Into the Wild, Margo at the Wedding and Elizabeth–all wonderful.  I watched Atonement on Sunday morning–two thumbs up!–and then watched Michael Clayton with Warrington on Sunday night.  I didn’t see American Gangster until a few days later.  It was good too.  So I can enthusiastically recommend them all.

Last Friday, the girls’ great grandmother, Clover, sent them a package. Enclosed in the padded envelope was a birthday card for Hyacinth, two rosaries, and an instruction manual.

When it comes to giving my daughters a spiritual foundation I give myself a B-. Actually, I take that back. I’d give myself a C. It’s not that I’m not trying. Every September, I announce that we’re going to church at least two Sundays a month. There’s a nice little Episcopal church two blocks from our house. It’s so close, I can actually hear the church bell ringing from my office. Lots of people from the neighborhood attend as do many of the families from our school, so the place has a warm, friendly feel.

Every time I make this announcement, the girls groan and protest and complain that church is boring. I respond by telling them how important it is for them to develop their own relationship with God, and that ultimately, I don’t care what religion or denomination they choose as long as they have a spiritual foundation. But then the school year kicks in. There are soccer games, birthday parties and sleepovers on Saturdays, and somehow by Sunday morning, we just can’t get it together. I’m embarrassed to admit that we haven’t been to church in a year. I thought about going on Easter Sunday, but couldn’t bear the thought of showing my face after essentially being missing in action.

I have my own spiritual practice which involves daily prayer, meditation and yes, even some yoga, but it doesn’t involve church at all. The funny thing is, I feel more connected to God now than I ever felt sitting in a pew. It’s exactly the feeling I want the girls to have–the knowledge that they’re part of something larger. Unfortunately, the yoga center doesn’t offer Sunday school, and since I think they’d freak out a little if I took them to an ashram, I’ve let the whole religion thing fall by the way side.

So when the package arrived, it called up all sorts of anxiety for me. It reminded me that I wasn’t doing my job. H and C don’t say their prayers at night. They don’t know any bible stories. They barely know Christmas carols.

After fretting privately for a few minutes, I called H into my office.

“Hey, sweetpea, I was just wondering. Do you ever pray at night?”

“Sometimes. When I’m scared.”

“Does that mean you believe in God?”

“I don’t know. I think I believe in the Greek Gods.”

“The Greek Gods? Why? I mean, I know the Greeks and Romans believed in them, but they’re not real. I mean, they’re not like GOD God.”

“Yeah, but they’re more fun. They help me understand things like why there’s thunder.”

Thunder? Oh my god. I’ve completely failed my child. But since I suck at science and couldn’t offer the scientific explanation for thunder I just nodded.

When H was a toddler, I enrolled her in a nursery school at a Lutheran church in our old neighborhood. I didn’t know it at the time, but as part of the curriculum, the teacher, Miss Sue, led all the little kids into the sanctuary on Friday afternoons after circle time. One day, as I picked H up, she told me about going to church, waved her little hands in the air and announced that, “God is all around us.” I was shocked. At the time, my own sense of God was underdeveloped at best. I still imagined God as an old man who sat in a rocking chair in the clouds. The whole, “God is within,” idea was totally foreign.

So I’m stuck. Time is running out. I don’t want H to go off to college without some kind of exposure. When the Moonies try to recruit her (as they did me when I was in school), I want her to be equipped to say no thanks. But the girls are right about the church down the street. Is it IS boring. The youth group is hit or miss and when the regular priests doesn’t deliver the sermon, there’s not a lot of other meat on the bone. About once a year, we go to Glide Memorial. Now THAT’S a church. The congregation is diverse, the music is amazing, and I don’t even mind that the message sometimes a little watered down to meet everyone’s needs or that they don’t offer Sunday school. You can’t sit through a service and not feel inspired. The only problem with Glide is that you’ve got to get there super early in order to get a seat. By the time the service starts, I’m always stressed out.

I wish I could find a church that offered something for the girls and offered a little bit of inspiration for me in the bargain. At this point, I’m willing to travel. If you have any leads, please let me know.