Attunement

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The anticipatory rustle as I pull the wrapper open - revealing the hard, lacquered gem - always gives me a dopamine jolt. I needed to understand what was happening before I started stashing boxes like contraband, sneaking away for a pectin kick and coming back with ruby stains on my lips.

I don’t eat much candy anymore. So why do Luden’s throat drops keep reappearing in my life?

It’s a strange realization: your guilty pleasure candy is a cough drop.

The latest episode came during a week of forced silence. Losing your voice is a peculiar kind of isolation. The world continues its carefree conversation while you're trapped behind soundproof glass. Everyone else has you on mute.

In that silence, small comforts become magnified. Mine came in the form of that small, oval, cherry-red lozenge. As the familiar, cloying sweetness dissolved on my tongue, it felt like more than just comfort. It felt like a key unlocking a memory I couldn't quite place.

Of course, I had to rule out the obvious: was it just the taste? Sweet, yes, but pharmacy-sweet - syrupy, with a faint medicinal note. I wouldn't enjoy a Luden's-flavored ice cream... or would I?

Sure, there were other early candy memories. The crisp snap of a Kit-Kat in my Halloween haul. My Soviet refugee grandmother slipping me korovki ("little cows"), the milk toffee sweets familiar to all children in Eastern European families. Satisfying, all of them - but nothing I was in danger of hoarding.

* * *

My first memory of having cherry Luden's was being 3 or 4 years old and having a special day out with my mom. She took me to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City - just the two of us. I remember taking the bus through Midtown, the hiss of its air brakes as we pulled up, and how, in the vast entrance hall, our footsteps were the only sound. We walked through the halls, and I stood small in the shadow of a looming Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. I craned my head all the way back until I nearly lost my balance.

Later, she offered me a throat drop. I remember rummaging around in her handbag, breathing in leather, impressed by the "grownup" mystery of her checkbook and compact before my fingers found the little box with its rattling contents. I unwrapped the drop, put it in my mouth, and smiled at my mom. I held the candy in my mouth for an instant, afraid to bite down and end the moment.

She smiled back. And I bit. I didn't understand then why that small red oval tasted like the weekend.

We almost never took these trips together. It must have been a rare day off for her.

My parents worked constantly. Nearly every day, my mom would wake before the sun, make my bagged lunch, then take a different bus and the subway an hour and a half into Midtown. She'd work a full day, then take the same commute an hour and a half the other way. And then, most evenings, she'd give piano lessons to children as her second job. I often did my homework to the sounds of little hands awkwardly fumbling their way through Für Elise.

Inevitably, my mom was exhausted. During the week, we'd trade short pleasantries, but we rarely connected deeply. It's not that joy was ever overtly restricted - it just wasn't her domain, likely because the sheer weight of her schedule left little room for it. I'd hear the unintelligible buzz of morning radio as she darted around the kitchen to get this handled or that taken care of before dashing off to work. The prevailing feeling was obligation.

For her, love was expressed through the relentless management of daily life. If she'd written a motto then - in the same careful hand she used to sign checks at the kitchen table - it would have read: "I must fulfill my duty." It was the loving posture of a woman building a fortress of predictability simply to keep us afloat.

But that museum day was an improvisation. On that day, there was no script. There was only "Here." A simple offering, a shared moment with no explanation required. That, I realize now, is what made it so sweet.

There were exceptions, brief and bright. I remember curling up on the couch next to my mom as a 4 or 5 year old to watch The Cosby Show, then the biggest show on television, or Perfect Strangers. I had a sense even then that this entertainment wasn't really targeted at my demographic, and I didn't get all the jokes and references, but I remember laughing alongside my mom. I don't recall how much of my own laughter was at the jokes in the shows. Maybe I just felt delighted at seeing my mom set down her normal posture of responsibility and lose herself in a staccato laugh. We were together, and she was happy - that's all I needed to know.

Looking back, I see two distinct flavors of that rare, uncomplicated joy. The Luden's moment at the museum was a quiet conspiracy of two, a secret whispered between my mother and me, separate from the world. The laughter we shared on the couch was different - it was a broadcast, a shared wave of relief that bounced between us and the television.

But they shared a common source. In both moments, my mother had set down the heavy armor of her obligations. The endless checklist of the working parent, the immigrant's constant vigilance - "I must fulfill my duty" - it was, for a moment, gone. Whether through a shared secret or a shared joke, she was simply present. And for a child who mostly knew her through the lens of her duties, that presence felt like the warmest, brightest sun.

* * *

My voice eventually returned - first a rasp, then skipping past any briefly attractive Barry White phase - straight to the familiar, gravelly croak of "guy getting over laryngitis." Ladies, form an orderly queue.

The box of Luden's sat on the counter, mostly full. It was about the taste of a particular kind of attention: being enjoyed, being seen without need, without agenda.

Presence without obligation.

My mother gave me that gift on a rare day off. A small, dissolving sacrament of her time. I don't think she knew she was doing it. She was likely just tired, happy to have an unhurried day with her son, offering him a small piece of comfort from her purse. But that simple gesture became an anchor point in my memory for what pure, unburdened connection could be. The soothing hum of simply being together, a sweetness that lasts long after the sugar is gone.

In the end, I slid the box of Luden's into the medicine drawer, next to the thermometer. After all, they're for healing.