In August, we bring a set of new full-time writers to the blog. Please welcome Hannah Riffell (’22), who will be writing for us on the 6th of each month. Hannah majored in writing and a minor in business. She’s lived in Mississippi and northern Michigan, but right now she considers Grand Rapids home, where she is currently working as an editor at a regional news station. She is very much in love with Eastown, the Calder Plaza, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and Schuler Books.
Kit Kat bars in the supermarket check-out line always remind me of my mother. She preferred to shop in the morning, when the aisles were less congested and the shelves fully stocked, and she usually had me and my little sister in tow. Sometimes, Mom dispatched us on missions to locate blueberry yogurt or Capri-Suns or canisters of oatmeal, giving us careful instructions about how to reunite with her. We treated these missions very seriously. Occasionally an old woman would peer at us over her shopping cart, clicking her tongue at the absent mother who abandoned her children in the grocery store. I didn’t think we looked all that woebegone. In fact, I felt very brave and plucky, as my sister and I devised strategies for reaching the blueberry yogurt perched at the very highest shelf in the dairy section. As the older and bigger sister, I lifted Abby rather inexpertly by the waist and hoisted her as far up as I could, and Abby stretched her little arm until she made contact with the blueberry yogurt. Considering that we never upset a single rack of yogurt, it was quite a gymnastic feat. We always returned to our mother beaming, holding up the objective of our mission. In the end, we were rewarded for our good behavior and intrepidness by a red Kit Kat bar, which was sometimes torn open before the cashier finished checking us out. Mom would just shrug and hand over the empty wrapper, the bar code still intact. Besides, my sister and I split only three of the four snappable wafers—the fourth one always belonged to Mom. Never one to stock candy in the cardboard or snack on junk food, my mother nonetheless had a highly selective sweet tooth for Kit Kat bars.
Years later, I’m a college student on a grocery run to purchase the cheapest forms of food possible. As I place my ramen and bananas on the conveyer belt, I swipe a Kit Kat bar from the shelf at the last minute, explaining to the cashier that I always keep Kit Kat bars for bad days.
“Oh, are you having a bad day?” she asks sweetly.
“No, but just in case,” I say. “Chocolate makes any day better.”
“That’s right,” she answers and goes pushing my groceries down the line.
“My mom says that too,” I say, without knowing why the cashier would care. She nods.
“Moms are usually right about things like that,” she says, and then asks if I’m paying with cash or credit.
I unwrap the Kit Kat bar as soon as I get back to my college dorm room. I’m not having a bad day at all. The chocolate just reminds me of my mom.
My mother is alive and well, so the taste of a chocolate wafer candy has only routine sentimental value and not the nearly religious implications of a memory associated with someone long absent. A Kit Kat bar gives me mostly happy, those-were-the-good-old-days feelings, instead of break-this-bread-in-remembrance-of-me feelings. Those are reserved for my dad, who passed away when I was fourteen, a fact that probably explains why I have so many memories of grocery shopping—and completing other mundane activities—with my mother and my sister, just the three of us. And also why all our mundane activities felt slightly like a high-stakes mission, involving more improvisation and stronger emotions than before, and why even the small enjoyment of a chocolate bar in the parking lot was precious.
As I grow older, I realize that I maintain very few memories of my dad, by which I mean that I do not attach significant meaning to many objects or places or experiences that were once connected to my late father. Maybe I belonged to an unsentimental family from the start, that never quite remembered birthdays correctly and one time surprised my sister with a party on the 22nd when her birthday was actually the 23rd.
Sometimes I feel awkward about my lack of homage. It seems almost disrespectful to go about my life in such a prosaic way. I hear about bereaved people who commemorate the loss with a tattoo or carry around a good luck charm or engage in time-honored rituals on special dates. At times I wish I was more like them, and I have tried. Yet, when I revisit my dad’s favorite hiking trails or websearch recipes for his trademark blueberry-peach pie, something about it feels contrived for me. I can’t seem to latch onto a specific item to trigger a memory or a wave of nostalgia, the way that the sight of a Kit Kat bar recalls memories about my very-much-alive mother. Grief is idiosyncratic like that.
Hannah Riffell has landed in Lansing, Michigan twenty-three years after she was born there, nineteen years after she moved to Mississippi, seven years after she moved to Northern Michigan, and two years after she graduated from a university in Grand Rapids. You probably can’t find her because she’s either exploring the state, wandering around her city, or just lost in her own head.
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Hannah, I loved your writing. Please keep me on your site for future submissions. As an additional comment about your precious Mom, she as always been “ My sweetie little girl from the neighborhood”. She is a ver special “daughter of my heart”.
Thank you so much! It’s the best feeling when people like reading your work as much as you like writing it. I’ll be sure to share more in the future!
Hannah I can relate to the wonders and “Fix it” qualities of chocolate. Being a lifetime loyal lover of chocolate, I can profess and list an endless record of positive uses of eating chocolate. I’m never without some form of chocolate in my home , even if it’s only an opened half used bag of chocolate chips or a box of cocoa powder. Even one bite of a chocolate bar does wonders. But it takes the WHOLE chocolate cake.
JOYCE
You must be related to my grandmother! Chocolate comes with a lot of memories, and I’m glad it brings you joy too!
That’s beautiful, Hannah, and so very thoughtful and introspective. I look forward to reading more from you and learning more of who you are in this world.
Continue to be you Hannah.
Living in the now is a blessing so embrace it. Keep writing while you munch those Kit Kat bars and hopefully one day soon we’ll sip coffee in GR together
Thank you so much for reading! I’m so happy you liked my writing, and I’ll be sure to share more.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your kind words!
Great piece. Looking forward to reading more from you!
Thanks Phil! I’m excited to be a Post Calvin writer!
Welcome, Hannah! Thanks for this piece.
Reading this piece is like being wrapped up in memories all weaved up and wonderfully written. I don’t think I’ll see a Kit Kat the same now…
Brilliant work, Hannah! I can’t wait to follow your posts and write alongside you!
Gabbie! I’m always amazed by your magical way with words- I can’t wait to write alongside you too.
Hannah
This was so beautiful and thoughtful. I could see the three of you and it was almost as I was experiencing it with you. I am so proud of the young lady you have become. I am remindful of the years I had you and your sister in my Sunday school class