Addiction Story #18, Marigold: Nabisco in My Rearview Mirror

I take in signs and symbols. And on my drive home after donating blood in Paramus— after resisting the de rigueur Oreo snack packs at the canteen— I passed the old Nabisco plant on Route 208. That is not my normal route, but that’s how Google Maps sent me. Change is in the air. This is #18 in my series of flower-titled stories about sugar and overeating addiction.

The Fair Lawn, New Jersey plant (now owned by Mondelez) where Oreos and other Nabs have been baked since 1958 will shut down this year. CBS New York news link here.

Ever since my first time, as a college girl at the Red Cross blood drive in the Douglass Student Center, I’ve donated blood and/or platelets (a key component) when life and time allow. My mother was a blood donor, too.

I’ve given in the Port Authority, at drives in Montclair churches, to vampires on wheels (JK, I mean curbside mobile drives) outside my workplace on Park Avenue South and in the cafeteria at Catholic Charities New York. Lately, I’ve been going monthly to Paramus.

And every.single.time I can, at the “recovery table,” I nab several snack packs of Nabisco Lorna Doones and/or Oreos, along with a small juice bottle.

I tell myself I need and deserve the treats, for my effort to save lives. Or that I will take them home to my family, as I’ve brought Biscoff cookies (“The In-Flight Treat”) from airplanes—a souvenir from a stewardess and the bigger, wider world. I also want my husband and daughters…