Thursday, August 12, 2010

a taste of nostalgia



When I was a kid, my parents took me to work with them every day. They owned a mail order t-shirt business, and every once in a while my dad would take me with him to the post office down the street. Next door was a little Italian bakery that sold the most delicious brownies I've ever tasted in my life. My dad treating me to those brownies on our post office adventures is one of the really special memories that I've cherished for as long as I can remember.

When I was about eight, the bakery closed and I never got to have the brownies again. But I think about them from time to time, remembering not just how delicious they were but how special I felt when my dad would buy one for me.

For the last week or so I've been craving these sandwich butter cookies that look like leaves with chocolate spread in between them. So today my mom took me out to a local bakery to buy some -- but they didn't have any. We then proceeded to the post office so that I could mail my Flapper Doodle packages. While in the parking lot, we noticed a bakery that we'd never been to before, so we decided we'd try them for the cookies.

In the most beautiful twist of fate EVER, it turns out that it's the same bakery from my childhood!! They just moved!!! We always thought they had closed, but there they were, right across from the new post office that I've been going to for months. And they had the brownies. THEY HAD THE BROWNIES.

It's amazing how certain sights, tastes and scents can trigger really deep memories that you never would have thought about on your own. Right now, I'm just floating on a little cloud of nostalgia and childhood, enjoying all of the memories that came swirling back to me at the mere sight of this brownie.