SAPRE: The wind under our wings

My childhood obsession with chocolate began with Munch chocolate bars.

Violently tearing the striking purple wrapping, gently biting into the fragile, flaky chocolate shell, dropping crumbs on my grandparents’ carpet – all the great joys of a peaceful childhood. Soon my love for Cadbury – a brand that felt suffocating local – was superseded by a pretentious teenage desire for “worldliness.” I have come to appreciate Lindt and Lindor, Godiva and Ferrero Rocher, often to the exclusion of my once beloved Dairy Milks and Kit Kats.

I would look forward to Dad’s return from every work trip, approaching him as soon as he returned, tossing his purse on my bed and begging him to open the chocolates he had dutifully picked up for me. Later, I began to venture into the whimsical and murky waters of dark chocolate before finally deciding on the alcoholic desserts – chocolate and rum balls, black forest cake.

My changing tastes for chocolate were a trivial matter. I forgot about them as I got out of my sweet tooth. However, my grandparents – Aji and Ajoba – didn’t. And even today, every time I leave their house, I open the top drawer of their fridge – as is customary – and grab a Munch chocolate bar and a scoop of rum before I go home. .

I grew up immersed in the boundless love of my grandparents, a love that was often communicated to me tastefully through food.

My best days in college were when I came home from school smelling a mutton pancake or mava cake that Ajoba had bought for me at our favorite Iranian bakery. He passed on his love to me not only with hugs and aphorisms, but also with fresh pomfret from a local market and freshly caught comments from our fisherwoman on how coastal food flowed through my veins.

Perhaps my favorite memories with my grandparents are the meals I shared with them: shrimp curry at their table and chicken sandwiches from RTO. Their food was my conduit to a culture that might otherwise feel unapproachable, to the flavors of home.

And yet, it took me leaving for the United States and returning home for the first time this summer to notice both how much I missed their food and this permanent reminder of their unconditional love. It was only now that I noticed the hours spent cooking, driving and working hard on a stove to prepare the beloved puran polis I ate so thoughtlessly.

I have been incredibly blessed to be surrounded by people – my grandparents and my parents – whose waking moments are, more often than not, occupied by the things that make me happy, whether it is the clothes they wear. buy me or my last chocolate obsession. .

Although food is not a pervasive language of love, I am sure that many students here have been fortunate enough to speak the language of unconditional love with someone back home; kind notes from a high school teacher scribbled on the margins of each essay reminding you of your talent, annual trips with your parents, notes from your best friend that you take to college.

If unconditional love is the foundation of an amorphous notion of family, this is what we honor during family weekends. These are the giants whose bells we stood to see the bells of Harkness, the green of Cross Campus.

You often have to get away from home, school, and friends – retreating from an atmosphere saturated with love – to realize how hard it is to breathe without him. The family weekend is then a reminder to reach out to those loved ones, to remind them of your gratitude for all they have done and to comfort them with the idea that separation can be difficult for you too.

More importantly, an awareness like this speaks of the dangers of unconditional love that is exploited, neglected and left to rot and die. If you are the unchanging center of someone’s universe, their love for you is a weapon if misused. It gives you the power to unconsciously hurt, to irrevocably hurt those with the simple notion that you have forgotten them. And while the thought of hurting a loved one can make me sick deep inside, it’s easier to do than say – put off a phone call indefinitely because mid-season is approaching.

So I hope this family weekend was the perfect reminder of how we feel, or how we see our friends change, when they are surrounded by people who make us the best versions of us- same. I also hope this can be a reminder to express our gratitude to the people on whose wings we flew to Yale.

PRADZ SAPRE is a sophomore at Benjamin Franklin College. His column, entitled “Growing Pains”, is published every other Monday. Contact him at [email protected].