The Candy Parade has Just Begun
By Tiffany Lewis

Editor’s note: Overwhelmed by a move to Texas and the birth of her third son, Meridian columnist Tiffany Lewis took a hiatus from writing for nearly two years. Starting today, she is back for monthly Meridian appearances.

Open wide.

The candy parade has arrived, and it won't pull out of town until sometime around May Day.

There is nothing like an oversized orange sign advertising an upcoming Candy Carnival to make those cavities in the back of my mouth start to ache. I see the gleam in my kids' eyes as they tromp through the front door laden with bags of Tootsie Pops and cupcakes.

Sugarfest 2007 is inescapable.

I cringe at the piles of empty wrappers littering the floor of my house, but I have to remember what it was like to be a kid. I expended a lot of mental energy thinking about candy. The sugarplum fairies didn't just dance in my head: They did the hoedown. I constructed elaborate daydreams about those giant gummy bears in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and tried every year to fill my pillowcase to the tip-top on Halloween. Then Thanksgiving rolled around, with its litany of pies. Then Christmas with all its cookies, peppermint ice cream and eggnog. It was heaven, gilded in sucrose.

Things haven't changed. Our kids marinate in sugar from one holiday to the next, and we spend the entire summer detoxifying them, only to send them back to Candy Land in the fall.

Perhaps I'm paranoid because my oldest son, who has genetically soft teeth, had six root canals before his fifth birthday. If we ever fall upon hard times, we can just melt down his crowns and fashion a couple of silver spoons. But you have never met a family of more vigilant teeth brushers, kids included. The idea of another trip to the dentist strikes fear into their hearts. They can eat with the best of them, but they won't go to bed without running a toothbrush over their sugar-laced molars.

I once met a mom who boasted that her 3-year-old had never tasted refined sugar. I couldn't decide whether to admire her or pour high-fructose corn syrup on her head. Of course, I would love to keep my kids away from the onslaught of sweets. We eat apples and carrots and mounds of lettuce, and my kids certainly know the difference between what's junk and what's actually substantive. But I already feel like the Meanest Mom in the World for depriving them of soda and every cereal that lists sugar as the first ingredient.

I really gave it a valiant effort. The first year the Easter Bunny came to our house, he brought plastic eggs stuffed with prunes and raisins. This was for two reasons: For one, I was determined to beat my own healthy path down Holiday Lane; but the real reason my kids got prunes is because I snarfed the entire bag of malted eggs before Sunday even arrived. So maybe it's the glaring hypocrite in me that won't deprive my kids entirely unless I'm willing to put the kibosh on my bad habits.

And as discreet as I've tried to be about my own weaknesses, the sweet-tooth trait in our family is as dominant as the blue eyes. My 2-year-old, barely learning to talk, knows how to say "junk cereal." We roll down the candy aisle in the grocery store and three pairs of hands shoot out, to chants of "Chocolate! Chocolate!"

My boys and I recently finished reading The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling. A juvenile twist on King Midas, it's about a boy obsessed with sweets who eats a magical piece of candy that makes everything he puts in his mouth turn to chocolate. My kids were captivated, just as I was as a child, not because they internalized the moral of the story, but because the descriptions of toothpaste and lettuce and trumpets turning to pure chocolate made them swoon with desire. What 5-year-olds wouldn't want to turn their parents into life-sized chocolate statues?

But I wonder and worry a little about the future. When I send these kids out into the wide, wide world, will they do as I did in seventh grade and subsist on Cherry Icees and Little Debbie peanut butter bars? Will they remember to eat a least one veggie, preferably two, with every meal? Or will they actually consider Jell-O salad a reasonable alternative to something leafy from the garden?

We broke open a pomegranate the other day and sat at the table feasting on each individual jewel until our hands were streaked with bright red juice. It was more fun than a bag of peanut M&M's.

I guess the real point for me is that I want my children to realize, at some distant time, that a strawberry-flavored Jolly Rancher can never mimic the natural sweetness of a real strawberry, that an apple can taste like the essence of autumn without being dipped in caramel. Nature in her subtlety has given us a banquet of colors and tastes and textures that are as rich and satisfying as anything Brach's has conjured up.

And that is something to feast on.

This article originally appeared in the Austin American-Statesman, and is used here by permission.