Today is July 11th, and convenience store giant 7-Eleven seized this opportunity to give out free Slurpees to its customers, and prior to this afternoon, I had not had a Slurpee in probably over 15 or 20 years.
Before my parents moved to the house they currently own, we lived within two blocks from a 7-Eleven. However, because it sat on the opposite side of a very busy street, I was never allowed to go there by myself, so every few weeks, my mom would allot me about $5 and send me to 7-Eleven with my grandfather, who lived with us for as long as I can remember (as most Chinese grandparents do). He would buy his weekly allocation of lottery tickets, and I would scour the shelves, assessing all the possible permutations of snacks and candy my $5 would afford me. Sometimes, this would include a brownie, a box of Nerds, or even a package of CornNuts if I wanted to diversify from sugar. Often, I'd get a package of giant, chewy Sweetarts that I would have to smash against a tabletop to break the four oversized tablets into bite-sized shards.
But always, I'd get a Slurpee.
Back then, the 7-Eleven only had two flavors: Coke and cherry. Now, as I discovered this afternoon, the 7-Eleven downtown on Sutter and Kearny offers six flavors, two of which are sugarless and one was called "Alienade." From my childhood, these were not.
Back then, the Slurpee was either red or black and sugar-filled or sugar-filled. It would almost make my throat close up from the sweetness, and it would stain my tongue red for the rest of the afternoon. On the brief walk home, my grandfather would carry the paper bag containing my spoils while I held my cherry-flavored Slurpee in one hand, his hand in the other. He would never say much, and I was just as happy to be slurping along and preparing for my inevitable sugar high and subsequent crash. But his hand. . . I remember running my fingers along his knuckles and feeling his skin glide loosely against the bones underneath.
I have not thought of my grandfather in a long time with such specificity. He died when I was 25, shortly after I had moved back from Sacramento and in with my parents again. Though memories of him dart quickly through my thoughts from time to time, they are usually nothing more than abstract and hazy images, aged like faded Polaroids from a time long gone.
That, unfortunately, is mostly how my grandfather is to me, a figure whom I had loved and who had loved me but now only exists in periodic flashes. I blame myself a bit; like exercise, I imagine if I had tried harder and consistently practiced at the thought of him, those thoughts would all come easier now.
But from the very first sip of my Slurpee this afternoon, I remembered exactly how it used to taste, supremely sweet with a faint tingling of fizz, just like how it tasted today, and I remembered those walks from the 7-Eleven back to the house with my grandfather to a surprising degree of clarity. And because I felt awkward walking in and leaving with a free Slurpee and nothing else, I found a bag of giant, chewy Sweetarts, just like the kind from years ago, and I trust that the four tabs, still intact in their gigantism, will crumble to pieces when I smash it against a table, will be just as chewy.
I was 10 all over again.
I walked back to my office with my Slurpee in one hand, my other in my pocket, fidgeting with the plastic Sweetarts wrapper and trying my best to recall all the details of that walk from the 7-Eleven on Alvarado-Niles and into our home on Derby Court, how my eyes would never adjust quickly enough from the bright sunlight of the afternoon to a shaded living room, and my grandfather--the look of him, the love, his hand and mine and a sugar-filled afternoon.
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