I’m walking the aisles at the grocery store. I don’t have a list. I am listless because I wasn’t planning on going to the grocery store. I was planning on washing a load of clothes and working on a project out in my shop. But the power went out.

To begin with, it flickered off for maybe two minutes. It came on for three minutes, just time enough to reset the beeping appliances before it went out again. This went on for half an hour. Then darkness fell.

Followed by silence. Followed by me poking around in the pantry with a flashlight.

Going to the grocery store was the best idea I had under pressure. I know that’s pathetic, but hey, I needed bread and milk. Might as well get the whole motherload while I’m at it.

So, I’m pushing the buggy with no list. Without a list I am vulnerable to mistakes. Without my spiral bound pocket-sized notepad inscribed with a #2 pencil I am exposed to my Christmas weaknesses.

I didn’t think about this carefully before leaving the house. Otherwise, I would have had a conversation with myself.

“You know you’re gonna see them.”

“I know.”

“Well, just be strong.”

“One box wouldn’t hurt, right?”

“Hmm. One box leads to two.”

“Don’t go there.”

“I’m just saying.”

I’m working my way down the bread and chips aisle. Next, the ketchup-mayo-dressing-steak-sauce array. Around the endcap and on to the baking goods. I grab a bag of White Lily Self-Rising Flour.

By the time I get to the veggies and soups, I’m not even thinking about “them”. I’m not braced. I’m not standing strong. I’m not focused when I round the endcap and, there they are, looking right at me. There must be 200 neatly stacked boxes of chocolate-covered cherries.

These are the Queen Anne cordial cherries covered in milk chocolate. You can see the ooze and sweetness right there on the cover of the box. “Classic good taste” it says.

When I was a kid, these exact chocolate-covered cherries were a sign of Christmas. Just as sure as Christmas lights and carol singing and the appearance of Claxton’s Fruitcake.

Mama would come home from Kroger’s. The old Ford Falcon crunching gravel in the driveway. I’m standing in the front yard spinning the rubber band on a balsa wood airplane.

She’d holler to me, “Come help me get the groceries in.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The back seat was full of brown paper sacks. Real grocery sacks. Not these flimsy plastic excuses that can’t hold two cans of beans without tearing out. No sir. These sacks were full to the top. They held metric tons of groceries and then doubled as wrapping paper and covers for schoolbooks.

Mama reaches in. “Here. This one’s for you.”

I grabbed the sack out of her arms and held it to my chest. Right there on top was a box of Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries. I could smell the sweetness. I could almost taste the creamy insides.

“Don’t you open those. We’ll wait ‘til your daddy gets home from work.”

I was lucky, growing up like I did. When I did. I’m not going to get into a deep state of we-had-it-better-back-then, but it sure feels different. Dad and I shared a lot of common interests. We threw the baseball around. We camped and fished. We built stuff. We fixed stuff. And by “we” I mean I toted stuff, and he did the fixing.

One of our things was Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries. We loved them. We’d open the box together. Take the first bite together. Moan and munch and moan some more together. We sat at the kitchen table, the Christmas tree glistening in front of the living room window in the background.

As I got older, the chocolate-covered cherry thing changed. No first box opening at the kitchen table. No grocery sack with a box on top. I don’t remember questioning why. Maybe I lost interest.

We always opened gifts on Christmas Eve in our house. Santa came that night with more for the next morning, but the evening before was our gift exchange.

The boxes and bows were piled underneath and around the tree. For weeks I had ignored Carol Burnette in favor of sitting on the floor by the tree so I could inspect each package. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, I was wired-up and couldn’t wait for supper to be over.

“Let me clear the dishes first,” Mama would say.

She was killing me. Why couldn’t the dishes wait? We’ve got presents to open!

Mama insisted. “I’m not gonna sit down, have Christmas, and have to come back to a dirty kitchen.”

To this point, there had been no chocolate-covered cherries eaten in our house. It was like they just dropped out of sight. But there was a box under the tree with my name on it that I couldn’t figure out.

It was too small to be a model car. I really wanted a ’57 Bell Air, Red with chrome trim. Too big to be a new baseball.

“Open that one,” Dad said.

I picked it up. It rattled a little bit inside. Kind of a dull rattle. Not a tingly sounding rattle like maybe Erector Set parts. As soon as I tore the paper, I could smell the aroma. I was so stupid. I had forgotten all about chocolate-covered cherries that year.

And that was the beginning of a long tradition between my dad and me. For years, we each would wrap one box of Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries for the other one. We even got creative, trying to disguise the box, the shape, hide the aroma. It was our game.

I look back on that now and realize that Dad was just as much a kid about the whole chocolate-covered cherry thing as I was. I was the one who lost interest that one year. He was the one who did something about it. He was enough of a kid at Christmas that he didn’t want that shared moment to end.

So, yeah. I was lucky. I am so aware of how lucky I was to have a dad who cared, who sacrificed, who knew how to have fun. The whole chocolate-covered cherry thing was so simple. So ridiculous. But it was magical.

Like Christmas itself.

So, I’m putting a box in my buggy. Everything I just told you went through my head in about three seconds. I wasn’t planning to get any chocolate-covered cherries. They were not on my list that I don’t have in my pocket. But sometimes, things happen for a reason.

All of this reminds me of a time in my life that I cannot get back. It stirs every sense I have. Christmas is powerful that way. We cry. We laugh. We remember. We celebrate.

Dad has been gone almost 14 years now. It’s been 50 years since we hid cherries under the tree. But all it takes is one little red box to make it all come back to me.

This year, I hope you find memories that matter. I hope you find joy in just one moment of the season.

Merry Christmas.