We don’t have jellybeans in France. It has been my extreme pleasure to introduce my French family to what may have been the last essential element in my mother’s food pyramid.
It’s not surprising that I have a colorful array of jelly bean related stories. Red was my mother’s favorite, and mine as well. We spent more than suspicious lengths of time in the candy aisle, searching the bags for the ones that contained the most red ones, balanced with the least black and purple. So when Mr. Bulky’s came to Ridgedale Mall, offering the largest, freshest of Jelly Beans, that you could scoop out, by color even, our lives were dramatically changed for the better. My mother would scoop red after red into the sack. When it was nearly full, she added one yellow, just “to make it seem random,” she’d say. Clearly that would cover our tracks. We’d laugh in sugar coated smiles.
At Easter time, when Walgreen’s put out their sacks, she’d sort them out by color. Saving the white, purple and black for the birds, scattering them out the window of her apartment on Jefferson Street. “I’m not sure they eat them,” I said. “They’re Jelly Bird Eggs…” she reasoned. Again, our smiles glistened red!
Dominique grabbed a few from the sack he keeps in the car just before we went into the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. (I love that he loves them!) It’s not an easy museum, and it shouldn’t be. From slavery, to mass incarceration, my heart sank. I shed a few tears in the reflection room as the choir sang, A balm in Gilead. The last section we went through was on voter discrimination. I could see the jars of Jelly Beans. Smiling, we entered. What are the Jelly Beans for? We started to read. How did I not know this? They didn’t teach us this. But I should have known. But it’s so crazy! So insane! Can this possibly be???? To suppress the minority vote, they were asked to take tests – with the most ridiculous questions – like how many jelly beans were contained in this giant jar. Neither of us were smiling.
The thing is, we don’t have the same stories. And we are our stories. We carry them. We live them. They stay with us. Maybe the truest “balm” we have is to listen. To learn. To share. We are all here to tell a story. All.
