I’m doing Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a famed course on releasing your inner child and creativity. Through the pages of this workbook, I am to delve deeper into my psyche and renew dusty, old memories. It’s a brave exercise in nostalgia unpacking those boxes so carefully stacked in the back of my mind.
Some of the questions I have had to answer relate to the favourite treats of my childhood.
Growing up, my parents didn’t have a lot of money, and with a rambling home in the suburbs of Cape Town we ate every meal together as a family of 5. There were no snacks with drinks in the evening, and no fancy cheeses, breads, meats or nuts. It was simple salads, vegetables, and home cooked meals. Family meals were healthy and hearty. Our sugar was as brown as our bread, which matched our rice. We never had soda. Our live-in domestic help made nutritional dinners that comprised all 5 food groups, and my dad cooked up leftovers on Sunday nights, into one big tasty risotto that never tasted the same. We did not have any junk or processed food in our kitchen, and never indulged in fast food. As South Africa isn’t really a fast food mecca, we did not miss that experience, but my mum did use to make the most juicy hamburgers on Saturday afternoons after we got back from shopping, which we also did together as a family every week.
On our Birthdays, we would get to go with the family to Mike’s Kitchen, and there we’d order steak (the most decadant item on the menu, in our eyes) which would come to the table decked in little flags. They’d give us badges, and sing happy birthday when our clown ice-cream dessert arrived.
And sugar was a sinful treat. “Dessert ” for us kids was always sour bulgarian yoghurt topped with powdered brewer’s yeast. My grandmother was on the same bandwagon as my parents, and would treat us with massive bags of almonds and dried fruit over Christmas. Never sweets.
All the while, we all knew my mom has a weakness for sugar. ”I need a pick me up” she say, staggering into the kitchen after one of her afternoon naps, hunting for “something sweet”. If there was nothing, as was most often the case, she’d get creative, adding maple syrup to cheddar cheese. On special occasions, she’d pull into an Indian-run corner cafe en route home from our afterschool sports, and pick up a piece of fudge, or Kitkat bar, which we’d all share. Once my mom, in a moment of weakness, bought us a real chocolate cereal, and we’d be rationed helpings by my father each morning for the following week. If we were lucky, we’d come upon (okay, find, after much hunting) fancy Cote D’Or Mignonette chocolates in the liquor cabinet, or my mom’s famous vanilla ice-cream, left over from an adult dinner party, which we’d as stealth-hunters, nibble at secretly in the dead of the night.
When I was 12, my mom was in the height of her agoraphobia and couldn’t face large crowds in public areas. This meant we all had to step up to help, and my task was the grocery store. She’d drop me at Pick ‘n Pay in Claremont with a chaotic list of our large household’s weekly needs and a blank, signed cheque. I’d spend the hour filling the trolley with milk, bread, meat, and a cream-filled donut as reward. As a teenager with other less charitable things on my mind, I confess I did it for the donut.
One day about the same time, my brother forgot me at the dentist, and went on to the beach for the day with friends. I sat alone and bored out of my mind in the sterile waiting room for 10 hours. There were no cellphones in those days, and no one missed me. When the misunderstanding became my clear, my mom showed up shamefaced, with a sweet treat on the seat.
When I was 14, I discovered my mom’s soda water bottles yielded a deposit at the store on the corner. My neighbourhood friends and I would nick a couple, and using the change, would stock up in candy cigarettes, black toffees, nigger balls (as they were called in those days), Chappies chewing gum, and creme soda. One day, this trick got bigger than me, and my mom caught me with my balletbag choc-a-block full of every type of candy the tuck shop offered. She confiscated the loot, and put it in a copper pot in the hallway to monitor my intake. It was around this time that my family’s sugary stealth habits moved up a step and on to condensed milk. This was the only accessible sweet, as it was an ingredient in my mom’s dinner party ice-cream. We’d boil the can till the milk became creamy caramel, or punch a hole in the roof and suck the creamy dew out. With friends, I bake trays of fudge and finish them in an afternoon. I took to nicking the cans, and it was one afternoon that the maid caught me guiltily disposing of two empty tins in the outside bins, that she alerted my parents who staged an intervention. Even I knew I had gone too far. I recall making up stories to friends about magic sweet cupboards that never existed at home, just to feel more normal.
As adults, one of us discovered my dad’s chocolate stash. We all thought we knew him until that day, and no one was more surprised than my mother about my father’s love of white and dark chocolate. They now play a game for two of hide the chocolate with him burrowing slabs in tall places she can’t reach.
Today, I thank my parents for helping us all establish healthy meal habits. Thanks to them, as teenage girls, my sister and I never suffered the popular weight issues our friends bemoaned, as dinners were balanced, healthy and moderate in serving. But our hidden sweet tooths are an altogether different story. Whether it is genetic, or the result of growing up in a household where sugar was coveted as a forbidden reward, I will never know. We stash, collect, snack and steal, like the confectionary addicts we are. Comparing notes with grown up friends, I can confirm our sugary behaviour is and was nowhere near normal, and we continue to be quite mad in our quest.
