Sweet'N Loaded

I'm coming clean about coffee.

Growing up in the ‘90s there were two types of families: You were either a Sweet‘N Low house or an Equal one. The sound of a ripping pink packet (we were a Sweet’N Low fam) against my mom’s long acrylic nails conjures memories of chicken fingers dipped in honey mustard and eaten in a big booth in the smoking section at the diner near my nana’s house. Empty soggy pink wrapper scraps stuck to the saucers, my mom and nana carefully reapplying lipstick that had succumbed to a shared bagel and lox platter and the rims of their coffee cups.

Though Sweet’N Low has been around since the ‘50s, today we know, even more so than we knew in that diner booth, that it’s not exactly health food. Many places these days opt instead to offer natural sugar, simple syrup, a seldom Splenda or two as caffeine accoutrements. But my mom & nana remain faithful, toting the pink stuff around in little plastic baggies — just in case.

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Unlike so many of the qualities I’ve inherited from my matriarchy, a taste for saccharin isn’t one of them. I always found it to be too sweet, too artificial, too much not like coffee. I don’t judge them for liking it, it just wasn’t my cup of — you know.

My feelings about it remind me of this man I once briefly dated who, on our very last date, revealed to me that he didn’t like condiments. “Why would I want my food to taste like other food?” He asked defiantly as I tried to keep down my tacos. How had I shared meals with this man and not noticed such a flagrant flaw?