M&Ms: Making New Friends
“And this is for you!” My nine-year-old said as she proudly handed a small parcel to me. We decided as a family to make plates of homemade cookies and deliver them to friends on this particular Friday. I had already noted that cookie deliveries within our ward were quite possibly non-existent, but at least very uncommon. Nonetheless, I like stories about baked goods being delivered, and I like baked goods being delivered to me. So at my encouragement, we decided as a family to live what we love.
As night crept up more quickly than anticipated on the date of our planned roguery, my husband and I decided to “divide and conquer” for the actual dispensing portion of our adventure. Thus, we segregated our cookie delivery list into two geographic areas and took separate cars lest we be out past our children’s bedtime.
I am the baker of the family, and a self-proclaimed foodie. I like cooking –and eating- and trying new recipes. I have often called cooking a biodegradable art form—because if it’s really terrible, it will biodegrade quickly– as if nothing happened. Sort of like Banksy’s Girl With a Balloon… but without the mess being more valuable post-destruction. Thus, there was little question of who in our family might’ve been the master-mind and master-chef of the cookie caper.
My car load was home first. This was owing to reserved conversation of the startled recipients we knew only from church: they didn’t know us well, and though clearly delighted, were unsure of what to say. “Mission accomplished,” my eldest smiled at me on the drive home. “I like surprise good deeds.” My husband’s car was second, as it was insisted that they stay at the last delivery spot for the father in their home, who would be but ten minutes later. They waited, presented the cookie plate, had a warm and friendly chat, and then left, gifted with a reciprocal parcel.
The parcel was a collection of M&Ms wrapped in clear, but thick plastic. This man works at an M&M factory. Though we love him and his family for who they are, there is something magical about knowing someone who works at a real-life chocolate factory. Knowing him and his family, even if he were to find work elsewhere, the magic would remain: they are good people. Good, righteous people. We are honoured to know them.
One of the many fun things about this family is that they know what kinds of M&Ms each member of our family likes best. My favourites are peanut M&Ms, thus the parcel was entirely peanut M&Ms. He knew I was the cookie delivery mastermind. I like that. But these were not just any peanut M&Ms—even better, they were the rejected peanut M&Ms.
Delicious as any others (and more delicious because peanuts) these were M&Ms that were misshapen, oddly cut, or doubles, or even triple-peanut-ed that were excluded from the pristine M&Ms that would be packaged and sold. Only employees are privileged enough to get an entire package of these – – some would call them mistakes– but we love them. Because they are rare, and hidden from public view, they become clandestinely scrumptious in our minds.
Being a parent, and therefore forced to “set an example” by sharing, I poured the M&Ms into a family share bowl. It was wonderful to gaze at the splendour of the misshaped candy that we –knowing an M&M factory insider- were lucky enough to acquire. As with french fries and carrot sticks, we compared and competed with them- largest blob, strangest shape, tallest morsel, most chipped, etc. But every now and again, a perfect M&M would show its face in the mix. Or at least we could see no flaws in it, and presumed that by mistake this seemingly perfect M&M ended up in the rejects lot. Yet because we were competitive, we were disappointed in its perfection. We wanted flaws! The perfect ones were a disappointment, and if we didn’t try to damage them, thereby creating imperfections, they were the first to be “disposed of” as they were unfit for competition or contrast.
As I rifled through the rejected M&Ms, revelling in the flaws, I thought of the people at church. Sure, all the typical tropes came to mind about how each of us is imperfect. After all, we are all mortally insufficient. We need the perfection of Jesus to heal us, cleanse us and make us worthy. This is the foundation of Christianity; not the perfection we wish we were, but rather how much our imperfection and our striving to improve makes us who we are. It is the doctrine of the flawed M&M- imperfect, yet delicious, loved, valued and highly desired.
[image error]But what lingered then—and still now, was the perfect-looking M&M in the bowl mixed in with the defective, hazy confection of red, blue, yellow, green, orange and brown. The “perfect” M&M I was looking at in that moment had a bright green shell, and a perfect ‘m’ monogram. It was my favourite colour, and my favourite kind of M&M. There it was, in its thoroughly unflawed shell, crisp and large. If I found it in a commercial bag of purchased M&Ms, I would salivate for it —wondering if it had an extra-large nut or a bonus layer of chocolate, and then I would savour it, sensing the salty roast of the nut, contrasted by the crunch of the shell, and the smoothness of the milk chocolate.
Yet, at that moment, among all the obviously imprecise M&Ms, all I could think about was how to damage it. How I could bite or smash it, then declare it a winning oddity, “most erratic shape!” or “freakiest chunk!” or “longest side split!”
I sadly confess that I have done that same thing at church. “She looks too perfect, I wonder what her baggage is…” It is a demeaning, wicked habit, borne from my own insecurity, loneliness, and the bitterness of being the new person. Again. And again. For the past few years, we moved house regularly. We had changed wards, branches, stakes and districts seven times in five years (one of those years had three international moves alone!). Like most people, we put our best foot forward in meeting the long-time residents, polishing ourselves like pristine M&Ms, hoping to make good impressions, and make lifelong friends. I don’t know if the “good impressions” we intended worked. In most cases, the lifelong friendships we hoped to foster did not knot. Rather, it seemed that we crafted a collection of silken ribbons: acquaintances far too feeble and glossy to create tethered relationships. Our “move in” and “move out” needs robustly outweighed any contribution we might have made in getting to know people… even though we did surprise “cookie drops” in each place we lived.
In our current location, we have put down roots, mortgage and all. We have been here a year, but it hasn’t been easy. Our shiny candy coats which stealthy hid our imperfections for so long have become ruthlessly hard to crack. We look pristine. Untouchable. Possibly even snobbish.
Perhaps that is why some of the gossip spoken about me in this most recent ward has hurt so much: they were trying to crack our shells to misshapen us into regular, mal-formed folks. Or maybe it’s the other way around—because we are still quiet, finding our feet, learning how to not be constantly moving—we are yet unknown. So we appeared as the ones carrying the bulbous, unwanted, factory-imperfect, bonus nuts. Thus, we stood out, sitting like misshapen saccharine kernels being silently roasted on a freshly commandeered church bench.
So I am learning. I am learning to love the perfect M&Ms as much as I love the globular M&Ms. I am learning to not try to polish myself so much that I let friendship slip away. I am learning to love the mix of the perfect and imperfect, the weak and the strong. I am learning to feel more comfortable in a mixed together in a bowl that is free from competition or destruction. I am embracing the imperfections, and not trying to bite apart the M&Ms that look too good to be true.
It’s a new year, after all. And M&Ms are a great way to start it.
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