I am your grandma.
Just like Macklemore…he pops tags, I cop sugar. Nothing pseudo glam like cocaine, just little packets of sucrose you find in any restaurant or coffee shop. Whenever I’m at a McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts, I give a sly eye look around, wait till no one is watching and shove a few packs in my pocket. You might wonder what’s the big deal, after all they put the sugar there for the customers to take, but what I do is different. I grab the little suckers by the handful even after I already put about 5 of them in my coffee. Once a random stranger caught me at it “Putting sugar on your burger?” he smirked after the he noticed my tray only had a Big Mac. “You could never have too many condiments,” I retorted, moving away from his prying judgement. Could he understand the importance of this horded treasure? Would it be even worthwhile to explain it to him?
The habit is admittedly bizarre, and to some extent messy. On numerous occasions, I absent-mindedly washed my jeans with the packets of sugar still inside the pockets. (Oh, the gloopy mess!) Other times, I left the sugar in my handbag for so long that the tiny paper sack wore thin and ruptured, seeping sugar granules into the crevices of my purse. However, the sugar packets usually end up in their proper location – the bottom shelf of my cupboard. There they become my pantry battery.
Most people utilize some sort of disaster planning. Batteries are kept near flashlights just in case there is a black out. Extra blankets are stored in the closet just in case the heat goes out. These sugar packets serve the same purpose. “Against what?” you may ask. “If you are really just stocking up on food why not buy a container of sugar and be done with it?” Because real food is not the problem. The problem is fear.
As my mother would be the first to point out, no matter how poor we were, we always had food. It might have been “Velveeta processed cheese product” or “KoolAid fruit-flavored drink mix” but there was always stuff to put on the table. (For this my mother has been and always will be a grateful immigrant.) Despite this delectable, if somewhat unhealthy bounty, I was always possessed of the lingering anxiety that food, like other things might not be easily replenishable. Toys were the best example of a non-replenishable item. Break a toy and the toy was gone. When I was 8 years old, my brother Alex and I had a red “Tyco Psycho” with two giant back wheels. It was the coolest remote-controlled car I had ever seen. With his engineering mind, Alex one day dissected the car in an effort to figure out how it worked. Sadly, Alex could get a job at a chop shop but never as a mechanic. That was the end of Tyco. Since toys only came around on our birthdays or Christmas, it was a long time before the Tyco Psycho was reincarnated. In the interim, I was left with a feeling of Want. This capitalized Want is a persistent feeling, and like the ink stain of stains, it leaves a powerful residue. Long after a leaky pen is disposed of and dries up in a land fill, the ink stain it left behind lingers on. The same is true of Want. Even when we eventually got a new car, it seemed so fragile and fleeting. I worried that it too, would eventually slip away from me like the last one. Toys, clothes, books were all like grains of sand (or sugar) falling through my fingers, I had no vault where I could keep them safe. They would all disappear, leaving me with the emptiness of Want.
No one wants Want.
So yes, I am your grandma. Even if reality tells me I can easily purchase some sugar at the grocery store, fearful Want moves my hand. It compels me to act like a thieving squirrel, hoarding packets of sugar. I do this because like the Starks I always feel winter is coming, and with it the scarcity of Want. I have to prepare for this, even if only in my mind.
