"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who love chocolate, and communists." (-Leslie Moak Murray)

When I was a child, my mother sewed all of our clothes. She made dresses and coats for my sisters and me, and matching dresses for our dolls. It was nothing to see her slipcover furniture or whip up drapes for the rooms in our house. Our Halloween costumes were always hand-sewn creations. I remember wearing a witch’s hat that was a lampshade in a former life, so it hurt my head, and I didn’t like it.

My mother said, “You have to suffer to be beautiful!” and I remember thinking I definitely did not want to be beautiful if that was the case.

As a result of all that sewing, one of my mom’s favorite things to do was to go fabric shopping. Now, as an adult, I loved fabric shopping, but as a little kid, I hated it! I remember being small and visiting fabric stores where all I could see, at eye level, was bolts of fabric for what seemed like miles on end. It was beyond boredom to me at that time; I dreaded going.

Back in the late ‘50’s, we had only one car, and so, since my dad took the car to work, it meant that we would sometimes walk downtown to shop. We were not even remotely interested in going, but my mother was smart. She had a secret weapon that worked like magic to persuade us to go along with her:

I remember watching her take out of her bag a single bar of Hershey’s chocolate, and without fanfare, she would slooooowly give us each just one tiny square at a time.

That was it. That’s all it took.

“For energy,” she’d say.

We were happy to follow her to the ends of the earth if she appealed to our baser instincts this way. I’d let that tiny square of chocolate melt luxuriously in my mouth as if it was the last thing I was ever going to savour. We’d walk past an old armory in town, and I remember climbing up on the concrete blocks and steps as we went along. I would wonder if there was going to be another square, and sure enough, there usually was. Not many more, but that little bit of chocolate made the trip one I actually came to relish.

It wound up working out very well; one of my first lessons in the fine art of compromise: she got the makings for a new outfit, and we got dessert.

“There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.” (-author unknown)

Chocolate.