Individually Wrapped -- With Love

By Greg Downs

Until I was in second grade, we lived about an hour's drive from my grandfather. Every visit started the same way.

When he heard my mother honking her horn, my grandfather would waddle outside to the driveway. My grandfather, David Russell Howard, did not voluntarily step on a scale, but any fair estimate of his weight would have to start at about 300 pounds. He was a big man and could no longer run, but he could waddle as well anybody I've ever seen. He would open the driver's side door and tug my mother out of the car and exclaim about her. She was even prettier than the last time he saw her, he would say. And then he would lead her up the cement steps into his narrow kitchen, where he was frying bacon for his beans.

My grandfather stocked food like he was afraid the world's supply might run out, and he made a point of showing off the beans and tomatoes he had canned recently. He pointed to the rows of glass jars while my mother feigned interest. Still, he hadn't spoken to me.

Somehow early in my childhood, probably not long after I learned to walk, my grandfather had taught me that during each visit I had to pass a certain test before he would speak to me. It had nothing to do with getting good report cards or growing taller, or giving presents to him or doing anything else my other grandfather asked about. No, my grandfather's test involved something he truly cared about: food.

So while he and my mother chatted, I was literally underfoot, anxiously digging through the sacks of flour in his pantry, emptying the pans from his cabinets, shuffling the milk cartons in his refrigerator. After some searching I found a box of individually wrapped curly Chee-Tos, the kind that came in a blue plastic bag, but I knew my work wasn't done. Somewhere else in his house -- maybe under a couch cushion or beneath a chair -- he had hidden a box of 10 individually wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

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