Shaped Like Hearts, and the State of Alabama.

There’s something strangely comforting about jello.  Setting the kettle on to boil, and emptying that artificially-colored-and-flavored packet of dust into the bowl; carefully measuring the  water, and stirring till the power yields to liquid.  Pouring it into the pan and waiting for the refrigerated magic.

I bought a bunch of jello last week, right as I was recovering from a cold a la PhD: he was sick over Halloween but I, convinced of my infallibility and superhuman immune system, spent the weekend breathing him in regardless.  Karma, it seems, likes nothing more than a proud vitamin-toter.

On the upshot, I actually took the plunge and called in sick, for the first time since my senior year of high school.  Two days I spent in bed watching Private Practice, Glee, and Grey’s online … finer days have never been spent, no siree.

Early this week at the store, somewhat post facto, I stocked up on all that I’d have loved.  Soups.  Juices.  NyQuil.  And then, somewhere on the fake foods aisle, Jello.  Old friend!  Cherry flavor, and lime!  Fantastic.  I could almost feel my nails improving just pushing the cart around.

Thing is, those little boxes—stockpiled with the intent of “till I next get sick”—had a ridiculously short shelf-life.  It wasn’t two hours those things rested in the cupboard till the PhD called, with news; his mom had had an emergency oral surgery, a root canal gone very wrong.  She was feeling pretty miserable.

Now, this woman and I have something of an awkward history.  She was not a natural fan of mine in the beginning, and though things have been improving in our relations, at the risk of sounding like the United Nations, tensions persist.

I seriously just started at my jello while he talked.  Perfect, I said in my head.  A good-will offering.

I called her up Wednesday, totally out of the blue.  I was home—DC seems a nice island oasis in the land of federal holidays—and aside from a conference call with some New York lawyers (where Veteran’s Day means merely less mail), it was me on my own.

“I was just calling to see how you’re holding up,” I said, then clumsily threw in “And I have some jello.  For you.  I’d like to bring it by.”

“Jello?” she asked, incredulous at first.  “You want to bring me jello?”

“Ummm … yeah.”  And I instantly felt like I was 12.  We arranged for me to stop by around 3 notwithstanding, and all seemed on-course. Well.  My call went long, followed by me, in an expert feat of me, getting totally turned around driving to the Whole Foods that is literally next door as part of my mission to bring pretty flowers, too: walking, I never realized that the lanes are all divided by a hideous concrete barrier that my non-hummer car is not prepared to jump.  Every light after that is unhelpfully paired with a garish no u-turn sign, meaning I was late indeed by the time I made it in, blocks backward and back-tracked, chose flowers, and got back on my merry way.  I literally tore through the neighborhood, being that girl everyone hates as she blasts past the “residential area” signs, cursing at every speed bump.  Screeching to a halt at her curb, I crawled through the rain, a cool twenty minutes late, to meet my reckoning.

She saw the flowers, my dripping hair, and my card-on-jello, and broke into a huge smile.  (She subsequently entered words of anguish—“I’m not allowed to smile in my state” among the more benign—but the thought was there.  Totally there).  She invited me in, let me sit, and we talked.  Just me and her.

In my head, this isn’t how it went, not at all.  In my head, she opened the door, stuck out her hand, received the offering, then closed me out.  In my head, it was a hostile “thanks, I’m very busy now, so goodbye” interchange.  In my head, she wasn’t warm.  Surprise, surprise.

We had a real conversation.  She asked me how I was, and told me what was up with her life, her work; her local children and her friends.  We just talked.  I think she was really truly lonely, and for a genuine moment, I was glad to be there.

Though we covered a lot of ground, I think our best conversation was about the jello.  It all started when she asked me how I’d shaped it as she was putting it in the fridge.

Now, I consider myself the mistress of a pretty well-appointed kitchen.  Sure as there are some things I don’t have—the kitchenaid mixer is waiting for a someday wedding registry, for instance—but on the whole, I have all the right tools.

When it comes to cookie cutters, however, I may be a bit deficient.  I have (a) a gingerbread man; (b) varying sizes of hearts, part of a valentine’s collection; (c) the state of Alabama.  That last one was a never-before-used gift from a beloved southern roommate, years ago now.  The jello seemed the perfect canvas to bust it out.

I sent his mom jello shaped like hearts and the state of Alabama.  She suppressed another laugh at the story, and then it strikes me.  Aha, I think.  This woman gets me.  My sense of humor is strange, and there’s something about confederate jello that I just find positively hilarious.  Like, shoot wine out my nose hilarious.  She took it all in stride, and if not for the stitches in her gums, I think she’d have been rolling all magda-style.

The best part, though, was yet to come. She soon tells me this story: The last and only ever other time anyone made jello for her was thirty-plus years ago, the day she went into labor with the PhD.  The neighbors made it for her to eat during the labor, she said, a happy accompaniment to the ice chips she was allotted.  (Shaped like squares, though.  I asked.  Bo-ring).

I totally cracked that memory, and I don’t think the parallel—the then and the now—was lost on her.  I brought her jello, and a little bit of the old her came back in a way that I never could have foreseen.

I left with a smile and a hug, and sure as that can’t have cured everything, it sure as heck made progress.

That little grocery store voice that said “buy me!” never anticipated this.  Then again, I think that’s part of the value of listening to those little voices, those urges and leanings that mayn’t have any grounding in logic.  So many of the twists of this life defy the rational, the sortable.  Making sense of everything can sometimes lose out on the chance for the unexpected.  The rare rainy day on doorsteps at real houses, and jello shaped like Alabama; stories of the past, and pathways to the future.