Popcorn

My dad was neither a good eater nor an accomplished cook, but he did have a few culinary specialties. On Saturday morning he would fry bacon and cut up oranges into eighths for us to eat while we watched cartoons. Later, when he took us grocery shopping for the week, store brand sodas were 10 for a dollar so each of us got to choose three and he picked the tenth. (It was always cream soda or root beer.)

We drank the sodas on nights when my mom was out at one of her meetings or another. Then, my dad would make popcorn on the stove and serve it with plenty of salt and butter in the biggest bowl we had. He set it in the middle of the three of us on the floor in front of the TV, and we would crunch and munch and wash it down with ice cold soda straight from the can. When the popcorn was gone, the unpopped kernels languished in a little puddle of butter and salt at the bottom of the bowl until it was wiped away one little fingerful at a time.

I took advantage of that one more unexpected snow day we had today to pop some corn over the fire. When it was done, I poured it in my big bowl, a twin to the one my dad used, and sat down on the floor in front of the fire to crunch and munch and enjoy the warmth, both of the fire and of the memory of those long ago evenings.