About the Note on My Fridge

 

Week and a half ago, almost my birthday, an Amazon package came.

I tore open the bag, big, brown, smashy, no sender address, and pulled out two smashy cartons of Boom Chicka Pop, 12 packets total. My sister. Of course! We had a history.

Gleefully I called her.

“Did you see my message?” she asked.

Message? No. I looked again. Down inside the bag was a note.

Hahaha. We laughed and laughed.

 

 

Boom Chicka Pop used to arrive routinely, big cardboard boxes of it, each holding maybe eight cartons labeled like in a grocery store and containing a bunch of individual packets, microwaveable. My sis—she jokingly calls me Sisty Ugler—had bought us a subscription. She’d said she’d keep it coming for as long as I didn’t say anything mean to her.

We swam in that popcorn. We sometimes gave some away. So easy to bump open the microwave, lay down a packet, wait rocking on our feet while it bloated up, and pour out the nubbles, exploded and salty, into a pan to pass between us. We grew blasé, even brazen, about indulging. When the shipments stopped, it wasn’t because I’d been nasty. I think my sister was trying to be frugal, for a change. She was simply pinching pennies.

Getting spoiled like that made it hard to return to popping on the stove the homegrown kind we still had in the freezer—a glut of it, red skinned, a tiny-cobbed variety. It meant measuring how much, and how much oil, and melting the butter, and yanking the lid’s stirrer handle around and around till the noise died down. So our consumption decreased significantly. Though, it’s not like we slimmed down or anything.

 

I didn’t give my sister corn this summer, it’s true—the other kind, sweeter than sweet, from big cobs torn from big long tall stalks. Putting up ours for the freezer, I’d fallen into the habit of bagging a little for her in just-right portions. I’d bestow them later, rock hard, icy.

But doing corn always drives me ragged. This August, goo squirting everywhere, the cuttings mounding soupily in my pan, up to my eyeballs exhausted, my back hurting, I got to seething. How could anybody expect me to keep this up? To self inflict this much pain, uselessly? To not only torture myself for the sake of ourselves but also for somebody else? To bend over backwards for my sister, yet?

So I didn’t make any bags for her.

Eventually, I told her. She handled it fine.

 

It was special seed, this time, from a farmer here who grows acres and acres of corn to sell. The seed wasn’t available in the stores. I wanted this variety for its super crunchiness. But having socked away so much, I’m having second thoughts. I feel like the corn is mostly just its skin, like I’m just eating cellulose. Even if I’d share some with my sister I’d still be failing her, because you’re supposed to give of your best, Ecclesiotomies 16:31.

Now we’re back to easy, popped-fluffy panfuls of hers in the easy sit-back evenings—my husband and I—with our easy rentals from Netflix flickering on the screen. Funny ones, not Adolescence or I’m Still Here or something else devastating. Justin Willman: Magic Lover had us screaming.

Buster wants popcorn, too. He stands there in front of the sofa, staring. He’s not allowed to turn into one of those dogs who eat from the dinner table or lurk nearby in expectation, so when he happens to divert his attention momentarily, look the other way, I accidentally on purpose drop a few of my baubles, like I’m fumbling, close enough for him to hear—smell—the buttery plop plop plops on the carpet.

Not whole handfuls. Because you’re not supposed to cast your pearls to the dogs, Jeremiads 7:12.