Remember in camp, when everyone would compare care packages? The cool girls were the ones who got tons of packages, or whose parents smuggled in contraband, and at the other end of the spectrum were the girls who just got something lame like a sweater that they forgot to pack–or nothing at all.
Apparently, both Nick’s mother and mine have learned a great deal from those years.
The gardienne really has to be sick of us by now: the day after she rang our bell to hand off one lovely framed engagement photo, she rang it again to give us the second (the first one took so long that Nick’s mother told the company exactly what she thought of them, and they sent another, which arrived in just two days). And later that afternoon, the gardienne came back bearing more gifts: specifically, my mother’s best care package to date.
Now, following the post in which I whined about tin foil, Nick’s mother sent a box of it along in Blake’s carry-on. And then Nick felt compelled to prove that he is perfectly capable of supplying me with foil on his own, and purchased more (don’t worry; you’re not the only one thinking that that’s ridiculous). My mother, not to be outdone, sent us 200 yards of the stuff.
And super-fancy scissors.
And some cling wrap, just in case.
More to the point, she sent along Easter things: egg dye, candy, and, most importantly, these:
which I now grab any time Nick gets snippy. It’s awfully hard to be moody and/or difficult when you can’t keep a straight face.
When I called her to thank her, the Easter candy reminded me of something I’ve been seeing in shop windows lately: regular brown chicken eggs, hollowed out and filled with chocolate. Most of them leave an opening at the top, but the cleverest ones look like this:
“Oh,” said my mother, sounding a tad wistful. “I knew it was just a matter of time before you’d find something cooler than what we have.”
Okay. Look, I love my Cadbury. But…
Nick had to open it for me with the foil cutter on our corkscrew. The ones with open tops are probably a little more convenient–this one was filled completely with chocolate the texture of dry fudge:
And it was delicious. “There’s still an appreciation for these artisinal things here,” Nick says, “instead of just more, faster, cheaper.”
And a day or two later, yet another box arrived: from Nick’s mother this time, containing about ten presents for his birthday, for Easter, for me, for whatever.
What I’m saying is this:
It may have taken me 26 years, but I seem to have become a cool kid.