How a Face Full of Chocolate Changed the World (At Least for a Little While)

It started in the parking lot outside of Subway. Emma, my daughter, was eleven or twelve then; old enough to be feeling her independence, but not so grown that I'd become a complete embarrassment. Ahhh, the good old days...

We were on our way home from karate practice (I think) and had stopped to grab something easy for dinner. She'd gotten a little brownie to go with her usual ham and cheese (lettuce and mayo only) and was unwrapping it as I started the car.

I looked over and shook my head. In under five minutes she'd managed to get chocolate all over her face. "You need to get it together," I laughed. "You're getting too old to be wearing your dessert."

"Maybe," she said, completely unconcerned, "but what if chocolate was purple?" She smiled and took another big bite, the gooey brown chocolate sticking to her teeth. "Then think how fabulous I'd look."

"What?" I asked.

She held the half-eaten brownie up and raised her eyebrows. "Chocolate. What if it was purple? It'd be cool. And then this brownie wouldn't look like smashed poo."

Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows.

She was right though, it did look bad. Honestly, nothing about it had been super appetizing even before she'd gotten a hold of it. Of course, being chocolate, it still went down pretty easy. In the unfortunate brownie's defense it had been smushed in plastic wrap, placed in a display case for who knows how long, then mangled by a hungry eleven year old. It's possible it may not have been the world's best example of a brownie.

She wiped her face (you have to love the extra stash of napkins in the glovebox) and we laughed the rest of the way home, thinking of all the delightful ways things would change if chocolate were a brilliant shade of bright purple instead of the dull brown of the recently devoured pasty, brownie-mess.

The whole thing was so silly, so light and freeing, that for days my mind was full of crazy images; fish with curly blonde hair, fields of wind-blown candy canes, crooning lizards. It made me feel like when Emma had been a toddler, before mean girls and cliques, before boys and dances, before iPods and apps. When the world was still ripe for exploration and anything was possible. When having rainbows for lunch actually seemed like an option.

I began to wonder how things would change, not only in the color of food, but in the world, if chocolate were purple. I let my imagination go and asked What If?

In a very short period of time, as if possessed by one of my own silly monsters, I wrote If Chocolate Were Purple. Over the years the text has been tweaked and edited, of course, and I've had the good fortune to see my words brought to life by a wonderful illustrator, but the heart of the matter has stayed the same, and one that every parent can understand—even if the whole world turned upside down, even if roller skates grew on trees and chocolate were purple, I'd still love you.

Writing is always a journey to someplace other, whether the destination is a fantasy world with pointy-eared elves and glittering fairies, or a perspective that exists only in your mind. It's sanctioned escapism, and I am grateful to have it. When it works, when the author has done their job, a bit of magic happens and the reader comes along for the ride. Working on this book was a glorious bit of nostalgia for me, of revisiting a time when pirate ships made of blankets stretched over couches and chairs almost everyday, where swords and dragons were always with us, and hospitals were called Princess Castles.

Thanks, Emma, for all of your delightfully messy faces, for your wild, independent spirit, and just for asking the question. You are my heart.