Can We Have a Donut?

A special treat that was always anticipated made Saturday nights the most exciting time of the week in our household! 

My great aunt and uncle would come to our house every Saturday night to play cards with my parents. They would always come with bags of goodies and snacks for their poker games. There would always be cantaloupe, and honeydew, alongside a magnificent smorgasbord of savory bites, cheeses, and crackers. My mother would cut everything up and prepare their snack bowls filled with various treats to complete the evening's feast.

I used to just linger around watching, until one special night when I was recruited to be the Jeopardy! reader. I was so excited to join the adults at the table, even if trying to pronounce all those big words at 11 or 12 years old turned out to be a real challenge. None of that mattered, though—I had made it to the adult table! 

Eventually, I graduated from reading clues to joining them in cards. My father taught me all of their favorite poker games, and I was instantly hooked. Starting the evening by reading Jeopardy! clues and finishing it with a hand of poker was exciting at least on the nights when I actually won. When I lost, it wasn't quite as thrilling! 

But the absolute best part of the entire evening was the box of Dunkin Donuts that my great aunt and uncle brought. We would watch eagerly as they placed that familiar, cheerful pink-and-white box right on the counter. Opening that box each week and seeing all of the different colored donuts filled with various creams was heaven. Us kids were always allowed to pick one and it was always such a hard decision, but it was Dunkin Donuts and you really couldn’t go wrong with any one. 

Then would come Sunday morning. My parents usually slept in and as usual, that sacred box of donuts would be sitting right on the table taunting us. My sister and I would stare at that box, licking our lips. Then came the agonizing debate over who was going to ask our weekly question.

Standing just outside the closed bedroom door, we'd whisper-fight in circles.

"You do it."

"No, I woke them up last time!"

Eventually, one of us would just yell through the door

“Can we have a donut?”

Looking back, those Sunday mornings were all about the donuts and the comfortable rhythm of whispering and arguing over whose turn it was to ask—even though we both already knew the answer was always yes. 

-Jackie