MARSHMALLOWS

In the months following David’s death our son Lawrence would come over to watch TV in my livingroom. There I would occasionally come upon him, sitting in the chairs his father used to occupy, reaching down the sides to retrieve long lost treasures trapped in the upholstery between the arms and the cushions. “What are you finding?” I’d ask. I would be thinking of spare change and other things that escape from pockets. “Marshmallows,” he’d reply. And sure enough, he’d come up with a dusty dried-up miniature cylinder that must have been there for a while. “To the garbage,” I’d say. “In a minute,” he’d reply. “There are only minis here. I guess when Dad was eating the bigger ones they never fell down that far.” I’ve always been drawn to the sensuality of marshmallows. It’s not just the sweetness that compels me. I love their shape, their ends, flat enough to stand for themselves, and their round, rollable bodies. A marshmallow is a silent treat. Ten of them could roll off the counter and you’d still be able to hear a pin drop as they hit the floor. They are pliable yet resilient. They know what shape they are supposed to be, and somehow they manage to hold themselves and be pillow-soft at the same time. They are simultaneously smooth and rough. Heat them a bit and they’ll stick your fingers together, strong as Crazy Glue. Run warm water over your fingers and the marshmallow glue will disappear completely. From the perspective of physical properties, a marshmallow is a wondrous thing. As I began thinking about writing this piece, I was surprised to find that the only thing I really knew about marshmallows was how to eat them. How were they named? How were they made? Fortunately, Wikipedia was there to save the day. There is a plant, known as the mallow that grows in marshes and damp areas of Europe, Asia and North Africa. The mention of it brings to mind a lush green tree with puffy confections on all the branches. Miniatures would peak out from between the leaves, waiting to grow. But it wasn’t quite that simple. Showing characteristic leadership, the ancient Egyptians ground up the mallow roots, mixed them with other substances, whipped air into the sticky mixture and ate it for medicinal purposes. Much later the French figured out that you could fill a deep tray with corn starch, make holes in it, and pour in the melted marshmallow mixture. When the centre cooled and the starch hardened on the exterior, you could lift out the marshmallows which now had a soft elastic skin. Even later the process was refined to exclude the mallow plant. Modern marshmallows are made by heating corn syrup with sugar and mixing it with dissolved gelatin. The gooey mass is then fed through an extruder. It emerges as a long tube which is subsequently cut into pieces and coated in cornstarch. Lawrence has never cared much for family parties. Any excuse to miss one would do. So I was taken by surprise when he said we ought to have a party on January 10, the first anniversary of David’s death, all the more proof that grief changes people in ways you’d never predict. “We need to have marshmallows,” he said, “And Safeway white cake with thick icing.” It sounded like just the sort of party you’d have for our sweet-loving David—just the sort of party you’d have with him. He’d be there for sure, celebrating with family and inhaling the sugar. I could feel the incongruity of such an event, having David absent yet somehow present at the same time. I wondered whether pieces of his favourite cake would mysteriously vanish when we weren’t looking. Lawrence bought the cake on his own, but he and I did the marshmallow shopping together. It was a task he would not take lightly. I could see that he must have shopped for marshmallows with his dad. He lifted the bags from the shelf and inhaled their sweet aroma. Only the freshest, softest, fluffiest specimens would do. Each marshmallow had to stack independently, never sticking to its neighbours. You could assess this by gently caressing the packages. We came away with two large bags that met all his specifications. Like Lawrence, I am prone to sentimentality these days, drawn to things that can bring David to life—if only in the imagination. Marshmallows had a double meaning in our family. David was our personal marshmallow. If you asked him to account for an act of kindness or generosity, he’d grin and say: “I’m a marshmallow.” That was the only explanation you’d get. It was I who first assigned the label to him. I believe I was angry at the time. “You are a marshmallow,” I bellowed, pointing an accusing finger in his direction. Just what it was that caused the outburst I cannot now recall. No doubt he had raised my hackles by caving in sweetly on some point of order with the children. Did he allow somebody to have dessert when I had specifically warned that there would be no dessert until the dinner plate was cleaned? Did he permit someone to go swimming without having cleaned up the bedroom clutter? Whatever it was that he had done, I wanted him to know that I expected a firmer approach. But in choosing the name I had made a serious miscalculation. Calling him a marshmallow as a shaming device was about as effective as accusing skating ice of being smooth, or blaming diamonds for sparkling. It was a compliment. He loved marshmallows, and if he was one of them, then he had found his tribe. He was proud to be a member. If he could keep them around the house long enough for baking, David used miniature marshmallows to make Rice Krispies squares. He was so good at it that our daughter Ruth asked him to make a Rice Krispies cake for her wedding. In preparation He shopped for four nested wedding cake pans, 2 pounds of butter, 104 cups of cereal and 8 large bags of fragrant, soft, perfect miniature marshmallows. In the hot days of summer we were both happy that Ruth was getting married and sad that she would be moving away. David wanted to choose the perfect time for the making of the cake--to ensure the freshness and also leave spare time in case things didn’t go as well as expected. July evenings in Alberta tend to be warm, lit by a brilliant sun that sets some time around 10:00 and leaves a long soft twilight. They lure you outside for walking and barbecuing and gardening. But now and then you get a series of scorching days, followed by an evening where the sky bruises to black, the rain hammers everything and lightning flashes in all four directions to the undulating beat of continuous thunder. It was on such a night, with the windows wide open to let in the fresh cooling breeze, that we set about the task of constructing the huge cake that would send our daughter off to spend a new life in Ontario. With the tempest raging outside and me acting as baker’s helper, we measured and melted marshmallows into puffy sticky clouds. Then we mixed, marvelling at the way things change. It would never have occurred to us to use Rice Krispies squares as a wedding cake. But the cake we were constructing on this stormy night would boldly grace Ruth’s head table, adorned with a spray of removable flowers. It would be cut generously at the wedding, and served on the spot. The guests would snap it up and go back for seconds. Ruth would proudly say, “My dad made that cake!” And so it came to pass, that on January 10, 2020, with Ruth and her family living in Ontario, Lawrence, Mark and their loved-ones settled at my dining room table to gorge on over-sized slices of thickly-frosted cake and unlimited quantities of marshmallows. With me occupying the chair at the head where David would have sat, we indulged in marshmallow nostalgia. Lawrence and Mark recalled the Christmas morning when Mark’s wife Tracey gave them marshmallow guns—yes, guns that shoot marshmallows. Reverting to joyous childhood, they were pulling the triggers and firing marshmallows at one another. “Those marshmallows go to the garbage,” I said. As they retrieved the spent ammunition from dusty corners David said, “Are you just going to throw them out? Could you not eat them?” Eating Marshmallows was one of David’s favourite pastimes. He ate them in the evenings while watching TV. He also ate them when we camped. We tended to camp simply, in the bush where you find the mosquitos. We didn’t generally have running water, and we never had a good supply of running water hot enough to melt the sticky marshmallowness off our fingers. If we used mosquito repellant the marshmallows would take on the flavour. If we didn’t, then we had to scratch at the bites with sticky fingers. You could cut down on the stickiness by clapping a toasted marshmallow between two cookies and calling it a smore. But a smore was more fattening than a plain roasted marshmallow eaten on its own. I don’t suppose it had occurred to David that marrying a blind woman would relegate him to a life of roasting marshmallows for two. “Blind people don’t roast marshmallows,” I told him the first time he handed me a roasting stick. Just to prove it, I torched the first three I tried. “Blow them out when they catch fire,’ he said. “Blind people don’t see the flames until it’s too late,” I said. Sighing in resignation, David settled into a pattern. He would eat one marshmallow raw, roast one for me, then roast one for himself. Every so often he’d over-roast one that had been intended for himself, and if he could blow the flame out before it blackened, he’d hand it to me. I never minded a little bit of ash. You can know a lot about eating marshmallows, and still have more to learn. Sitting at my table, remembering his dad, Lawrence rolled a marshmallow in icing from the Safeway cake. “Icing on a marshmallow?” we exclaimed. “Did David do that?” “I don’t think so,” said Lawrence. “But it’s good. I think he would have liked it.”