Mariana’s Secret, or, Buying Chocolates for My Friend Turning Fifty Tonight
I wanted to get her a beautiful wood bowl from The Bridge and fill it with fifty pebbles from Lake Michigan shore, a place she loves so, so much. But I ran out of road so I trotted down to Fabiano’s, the greatest candy shop in Michigan. And I said what I needed: fifty chocolate stars, in gold foil and silver foil.
Mariana, the granddaughter Fabiano, was superbly polite and efficient, the creative force of life pours out of her. She asked me about my book, my students, and she loved my fifty stars of chocolate idea. “I’m newly fifty,” she said. “Foxy, funky, fabulous and fifty!” She looks twenty years younger. I love Italian-ness. I love Mariana.
I said “Mariana. What is your secret? You look so so good.”
To which she said, turning my chocolates into a beautiful pink box, “What is yours?”
Mariana’s Secret: Walk, stretch, run, lift. Eat, drink, be merry, don’t deprive yourself.
I said: yes. That is my secret exactly. It is, too.
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