On Burned Marshmallows

I remember a lot of things from when I was a little girl – some of them were pretty happy and some of them were pretty sad. Come to think of it, there’s actually a pretty even mix between the two of them. There have been times in my life that I’ve laughed so much I’ve cried, and there have been times where I’ve laughed to avoid crying.


I think the time that stands out most in my life, however, is when I was a little girl of about five or six. Mostly I remember this story though being told it when I was older, but there are things that trigger bits of my own memory – things that I know I remember.


During the summer months – and into the early fall – it’s an unofficial tradition that my family has bonfires. (Now, by bonfire, I mean a little tiny fire pit with a little tiny fire… it’s hardly enough to roast a marshmallow let alone a hotdog.)We take the deck chairs down onto the patio and sit around the fire and bullshit. Sometimes we play the story game – which is where each person tells a line of a story until we go all the way around the fire; as the night goes on and the kids go to sleep, the stories get progressively dirtier – and sometimes we sit around and talk about life. Most of the time, we have marshmallows with graham crackers and chocolate bars and hotdogs. It’s when I sit there, smelling the burning wood and processed sugar, that my memory suddenly decides to kick into overdrive. And it’s always back to the same episode.


I feel bad, actually, that we didn’t visit my grandparents as much as we could. To an extent, though it isn’t an excuse, we did live two and a half hours away from them, and both of my parents worked. There were a lot of happy memories that I have from there before their deaths. Mum, my grandmother, really encouraged my writing. She used to get me sets of stationary and pens all the time. Pap-Pap, my grandfather, used to have me walk with him up the long driveway to get the mail and the newspaper with the shi-tsu they had, Tippy.


I think that the summer I was six, we stayed at their house the whole three months. I remember that I was so homesick, and all I wanted to do was go home. Looking back on it now, however, I’m glad that I stayed – even though I had some pretty weird dreams (like a T-Rex eating the Jeston’s house…). I also had so much fun in hindsight – which is why I guess they call it hindsight.


Anyway, that summer I remember we had a huge bonfire – and I mean huge. I wasn’t allowed close to it – none of the kids were (my cousins were there, too… kind of hellish, but whatever). If I recall, the bonfire was at the height of my homesickness.


There was a picnic table about five feet away from the whole were the fire was built. My mum sat me up on it, she put a marshmallow on a stick, and she told me to burn it. I, myself, had never had a marshmallow before, so it was pretty neat that Mum was going to let me cook one. I admit that I was scared to death to try it, but I did anyway – and I loved the crispy burned texture and the slightly bitter taste with the sweet, gooey center.


To this day, I can’t eat a marshmallow – or most other foods – unless they’re burned. It’s so silly, I know… and maybe a little icky – if you ask my niece and nephew – that I can’t eat a marshmallow unless it’s black, but it’s my way of holding on to my mum and my pap-pap.


It’s been 13 years, respectively, since they’ve died, but whenever I smell the burning of wood, I always think of that summer when I was a little girl, homesick for my own bed.

















 Writer’s Statement


I began writing this piece in class as part of Josh’s writing exercise when she taught her lesson. The prompt was about a memory that involved fire. Due to time, he didn’t have us start writing it – we just went around and told him, but I scribbled down the prompt, and I wanted to finish it. In class, I think I got down a basic gist of what I wanted to do as well as the first sentence of the story. I tried to leave out as much of what my family told me about the summer as I could and go off of strictly what I remembered. But I’m sure that I included things that I was told and just didn’t realize it.


I actually didn’t even use the sentence that I had written down in class. I started in a completely different way. I actually think that I like the way I started here; I think that it’s more honest and a little more personal then starting in with “When I was a little girl and my grandparents were still alive…” I actually can’t believe that I started like that. It’s clichéd, but in my defense I was short on time, and I just scribbled something down to get an idea. I think that this version is much better. I think that it’s more complete – considering it is complete – but also because it’s more filled out with a stream of thought.


I wanted to include some of the elements that were in “Morning Glory Harley” by Terese Svoboda in my finished essay, but I didn’t when I was writing it. I think that I liked her essay the most when I was reading the ones for the discussion because I liked how it didn’t seem like I was reading a non-fiction story. It felt like I was reading an actual story-story… like from a book. I liked how she used “a man” instead of a name or some personal pronoun like “I” or “me”. And I also like the etherealness of the description of the accident and whether or not the man walked away or died. It doesn’t feel bland and… textbook. With Svoboda’s story, I wanted to keep reading and know what happened.


I also liked the Josh’s piece – “Westbury Court” – because of its jumpiness. Danticat starts with talking a bit about a fire and then about how he would watch soaps after school while doing homework during commercials. It feels like a conversation to me. It took me no time at all to read the story, and I didn’t realize that I had finished it until I was looking for the next story.


I guess what makes a piece of non-fiction good in the genre is the addition of little things that both of those authors – Svoboda and Danticat – included. The open-endedness of “Morning Glory Harley” makes me wonder if the man was a husband, brother, or father. And, like I said, the overall tone of “Westbury Court” makes it seem like Danticat is talking to me at my table over coffee and cupcakes. I think that’s also why I don’t care for non-fiction, because I’m so scared that what I’m writing about is going to be dry and dull and stupid. I can’t decide if what I’m writing will be read by anyone or not – or if it’s even worth reading in the first place. In the future, I will try to include in my non-fiction writing – if I ever write non-fiction again – some of the techniques that Svoboda and Danticat had. I want to make it seem a little like a conversation and keep the reader guessing so they stay interested. I’m sure that I’ll tell them eventually, but I want them to keep reading until the end. So, I hope that I’ve done that at least a little in the rewrite/finishing of Josh’s prompt.