Looking for some color

Sweetness behind the glass
Laval, QC
February 2013

Lillie's Bakery stands almost in the shadows of the house where my wife grew up, in a nondescript strip mall in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable stretch of suburbia just north of Montreal.

We came here to pick up a few things for shiva* and I ended up gravitating toward the pastry counter for the same reasons I've gravitated here since I was a child. Like a moth to a flame, the fluorescent-lit, brightly-colored confections have always pulled me in. Not that I particularly ever want to eat this stuff - too sweet, too much - but the idea of something colorful and sweet never seems to lose its appeal.

And on this grey morning amid an endless week of grey mornings, this was just the shot of color that my soul needed. If only for a brief minute before we headed out the doors and returned to the grey, sad world from which we had come.

* Shiva: Jewish house of mourning, where immediate relatives are greeted by visiting friends and family for a period of one week. (Wiki, Aish.com, Judaism.com)

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