She died while I was skate-dancing to “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey at my friend Sarah’s birthday party at Ron-A-Roll. Mid-party, my stomach started to hurt, and I pulled over to the side of the rink and sat down on a sticky green bench, doubled over with pain. My body knew before I did—something was wrong.
When I got home, my mom opened the door, tears streaming down her face, pulled me to her, and said quietly, “I’m so sorry. Nana is gone.” I shook my head no, slowly walked to my room, and shut the door. I grabbed the latest Baby-Sitters Club book, opened my bedside table drawer, grabbed a snack-size Twix bar, and chewed and read while curled up on my bubblegum-pink beanbag chair. I lost myself in the story and the candy, trying to ignore that the person I trusted most had vanished.
Nana took care of me from when I was six months old until I was twelve. My first memories of her involve sweet treats. When I woke up from my daily naps as a three-year-old, I would reach under the pillow and pull out a special surprise of fun-size M&M’s, Twizzlers, or other goodies. I would roll over onto my back, gently tear open the package, and eat them one by one, relishing each new burst of flavor in my mouth. When I started school and there were no more naps, Nana still found a way to let me know she was thinking of me. A tin of homemade Christmas fudge and magic bars or Rice Krispies Treats for when I got home from school. As we shared a cookie, she would ask me about my day, listening to the minutia of my second-grade life.
“What happened with that stray dog Anne brought home?” she asked.
“Oh, her parents wouldn’t let her keep it! She was so upset, she cried all through math class,” I said.
Whenever we spoke, she held my gaze, nodding her white curls and smiling, asking question after question about the things that mattered to me and no one else.
For all of Nana’s generosity with sweet treats, my parents lived on the opposite end of the spectrum. My mom was very health conscious and liked buying natural sweets, carob chips, and fruits. Every day-after-Halloween until I was 7, I would wake up to all my favorite candies stolen from my trick-or-treating pillowcase. My dad would take the candy and gorge himself all night on it and, in the morning, act like he had no idea what had happened. Eventually, I caught on and started hiding my Halloween candy from him. One morning in early November, he asked where everything went, and I just shrugged. When my parents divorced, I had gotten so used to hiding my candy that I kept hiding it even though no one was there to steal it.
Growing up with two parents who were psychologists, there were bound to be disordered elements to my childhood; one of the most prominent was my parents’ relationship with food. My dad was a binge eater with a laxative habit. I never remember him not being overweight, though my mom claims he was pretty slim when they married. He always had a huge belly stacked upon spindly little legs. He never took a step more than he had to, played with us, or seemed active in any real way. Like I said before, in addition to him stealing my Halloween candy, he would also binge at mealtimes and then spend hours on the toilet.
My mom, at 74 years old, is still his opposite—very health conscious, making her own bone broth and sending me healthy recipes to try. Now that I am older and know more of her stories and extended family, I see why body image has weighed so heavily on her mind. At my grandmother’s funeral, my mom’s uncle’s first words to her weren’t “I’m sorry for your loss.” They were, “Wow, you’ve gotten so fat.” My mom has never been overweight. When I was a kid, she was always doing step aerobics or jazzercise, and at 5 feet 4 inches, she has been and probably will always be a well-proportioned size 6 or 8. She told me that her family had always noticed a pound going up or down and never missed an opportunity to point it out; they were all obsessed with staying thin. One Christmas, her cousin Rosie, a tiny birdlike woman who couldn’t weigh more than 95 pounds, was telling my husband Jason and me about the latest sadistic workout she was trying. She screeched, “Let’s get out the scale and see what we all weigh!” Jason blanched; my mom dutifully went to get the scale. I was relieved when she came back and said the batteries were dead.
In seventh grade, I started riding my bike to school and had the freedom to stop at the penny candy store on my way home. I began making weekly stops at the beautiful little cottage in the middle of the town green, where I wandered through the colorful aisles overloaded with delicious choices; the sweet smells of the shop enveloped me, leading me to just the right candy for that particular day. Somedays, I would come home with Swedish Fish, sour peach rings, and chocolate-covered almonds. On other days, it would be root beer–flavored hard candies and mini Tootsie Rolls. They were always small bags of treats I would hide in my top right dresser drawer. I learned at a very young age the importance of portion control. WeightWatchers was big in the 80s and 90s, when I was a kid, and portion control was their jam. I had trained myself to eat half the recommended serving size for any candy I wanted. I could only have five gummy worms or one mini-Twix and be sated, but I always needed the rest of the stash nearby.
By high school, all I could see was how “fat” my stomach and arms were. I had huge breasts and a tiny waist, and I was the fittest I would ever be, but all I saw was fat, fat, fat. I tried to give up candy. I stopped eating my lunch dessert—a snack-size Snickers bar—but found myself at 3 p.m., when school got out, hunting it down in my backpack and savoring each bite. No matter where I tried to make the cut, twice a day, I found myself craving candy. I needed that sugar hit after lunch and dinner, and sometimes an extra one right before bed. The comfort that came with consuming something sweet was unparalleled. I figured out midway through my freshman year that if I worked out a lot, the “fat” would be kept at bay. I started running and joined the swim and tennis teams to keep my candy habit alive without sacrificing my waistline.
Years later, when I moved into my first studio apartment in my sophomore year of college, after parting ways with a shitty boyfriend and his three roommates, I finally found the proper storage place for my candy, the vegetable crisper. It was the perfect place to keep my stash. No rodents or bugs could get to it and it kept everything cold. There is nothing like a refrigerated gummy bear. Its slightly harder than the room temperature version, making it a bit tough, so as you chew at it the flavor bursts in your mouth, a crisp, distinct delight. The crisper was convenient yet kind of hidden. It was an ever-rotating smorgasbord of sweet delicacies, and my first official “candy drawer.”
Until moving in with my husband, I never told anyone about my compulsive candy habits. I knew there was something different about how I interacted with treats. I’d seen friends pig out on sweets and, of course, had friends who never allowed themselves to eat anything containing sugar, but I’d never interacted with this specific titrated way of eating. Jason noticed my love for candy early on in our dating when we watched movies. One night, as he introduced me to one of his favorite films, The Sea Inside, he caught me “organizing” my candy.
“What are you doing there?” He said with a grin. My cheeks burned with shame. At the same time, I felt comfortable enough with him to let my guard down.
“I like to organize the Sour Patch Kids and gummy bears in order of which I like least to those I like most. Red is my favorite in both candies; I eat those last. I don’t like to eat the sour ones last, so I make sure I end on the regular gummy bears.” I had 12 in total for the entirety of the movie—having limits, like one square of chocolate or twelve gummies, helped me maintain boundaries and made me feel in control. I would start with a blue Sour Patch Kid, move to the greens, then the pale-yellow gummy bears, and finish with one red gummy bear. My husband gave me an adoring look and said, “You’re so weird, and I love it.” He kissed me, and just like that, he got to be a part of my candy land.
While studying for my Masters in Social Work, I took classes focusing on addiction. They were more geared towards alcohol, drugs, and sex, but I started to see how my relationship with sweets mirrored how dependence was described in our textbooks. It was also around that time that research about sugar addiction started coming out. Articles like “Sugar Addiction: More Serious Than You Think” and “Experts Agree: Sugar Might Be as Addictive as Cocaine” began to grab my attention. I wondered if my habit might be more of a problem than I thought. The articles taught me that sugar releases opioids and dopamine in the body, and the more we eat it, the more we need to eat it. I dismissed these studies as having nothing to do with me because I never needed more. I ate the amounts I allowed myself daily, and that was that. I never binged. I had complete control over my candy intake, and there was no way I was giving up candy, especially during the stress of working full-time and going to grad school.
My relationship with candy has matured as I have. With Nana, I was satisfied with Hershey’s and Swedish Fish. After moving to NYC, I discovered gourmet and boutique chocolate shops, even though I only made $30,000 a year for the first five years I lived there. Occasionally, I treated myself to a very expensive silky milk chocolate square at La Maison du Chocolate or Jacques Torres. Mostly, I stuck with what was on sale at Duane Reade in the fancier candy section, like Haribo gummy rings, Lindt with a touch of sea salt, and Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
For my first Christmas in the city, I couldn’t afford to buy anyone presents. That was the year I started baking my Christmas treats like Nana used to do for me. For the first few years, I made cookies. Then, I graduated to pretzel rods with fun toppings on the chocolate-dipped tips. When I was 25, I was diagnosed with a gluten allergy and had to change course with my holiday treats, letting go of the wheat flour–based cookies and pretzels and learning how to make my own chocolate bark. Every Christmas, my family, colleagues, and friends get a bag of barks: peppermint, white chocolate with cranberry and almond, and dark chocolate with toffee, a personal note attached to each baker’s bag, each tied neatly with a gold ribbon.
After eleven years of bouncing around city apartments we bought our first house in Rockaway Beach, Queens. One day, I was coming home from a walk and noticed two hooks hanging off the mailbox attached to our siding. I had never noticed them before. As I inspected them, I realized what they must be. I threw the door open and yelled to my husband, “Jason, come here; you gotta see this.” He came out of his office and, already amused, said, “See what?” “Come here,” I said. He took the ten steps to the door, and I pointed at the hooks and said, “Do you know what these are?” “Of course,” he said, just as I said, “Treat hooks!!!!”
He looked at me like I was crazy, so I explained. “They are hooks to hang treats for your neighbors. So, at Christmas, when I make my bark for all our new neighbors, this is where I would hang them.” I said excitedly.
He laughed and hugged me. “I love how your mind works, but no, those are for newspapers.” I looked at it again, and I saw it immediately. “Oh, yeah, ok. Well, I am going to use them as treat hooks.” I said, undeterred by their actual purpose. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.” He said, and went back to work.
For years, I have hung bark on treat hooks. I still eat my gummy bears in order of likability, and I have a fully stocked vegetable crisper filled with candy that I dole out in small quantities throughout my days. I still work out daily to counteract any weight I may put on because I eat 200 to 300 calories daily in sweet treats. Do I think I am addicted to sugar? Maybe. But the pleasure I get from it outweighs the cost, at least for now.
Jianna Heuer is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City. She writes creative non-fiction and fiction. Her work has appeared in Across the Margin, Hot Pot Magazine, and Underscore Magazine. Her flash non-fiction has appeared in two books, Fast Funny Women and Fast Fierce Women.
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