After school special

I rarely bring grading home --as a matter of principle-- but as it was the first day back after a 2 week hiatus, a stack of Macbeth essays somehow ended up in my school bag. I had a feeling that there was only one thing that would satisfy me--my mom's famous after school snack combination of popcorn and orange juice. I'm talking popcorn made over the stove with a little oil in a farberware saucepan. Waiting waiting waiting till that puh puh PUH puh PUH as kernels ricocheted off the saucepan lid, soft and violent all at once, like watching time-elapsed photos of a dandelion going to seed. Then silence. And a little salt. Maybe paprika. Or Parmesan cheese.


I read once that the area of the brain that processes
memory is right next to the part that receives signals from the olfactory gland--so I should not be at all surprised that the warm, toasty hot oil and popcorn smell flashed me back to doing homework at my parent's dining room table. And then again a flash to college, to writing cross legged at the coffee table and day dreaming out the bay window. Then it all flashes to now, to me with a heap of attempts at analysis and rubrics, scooping handfuls of delicate salted puffs into my mouth and scanning sheets of delicate young words. And somehow, it's not quite so tedious.