Jack insisted on showing me around the Safari Park last weekend. We have season tickets, and he knows the place so well that I spent the day being marched from one attraction to the next.
We visited most of the animal enclosures, including the Dinosaur paddock where Jack made sure I stood in just the right spot for a dinosaur to squirt water at me! He’s so cheeky and thought it was utterly hilarious of course as 4-year-old boys are wont to do.
After that we stopped in the BBQ area, which includes a large fire pit where —can you guess where this is going yet?— we bought marshmallows on sticks and toasted them.
We’ve toasted marshmallows before, usually those extra large ‘American style’ marshmallows (which is not a complaint).
But at the Safari Park we got three marshmallows on our stick, two large white ones and one smaller pink one. Those in the UK would recognise them as Princess Mallows.
Where it all began
My Dad had the most awful sweet tooth, which, as a kid, was wonderful as it meant there were always some form of sweet treat to be found, be that biscuits, cake, bags of sweets, or ice cream. I mean my Mum arranged for an ice cream van to visit the house for his 60th birthday!
We had a nice back garden in the house I grew up in, well tended by my parents, and whenever the chance arose we’d have BBQ for dinner. My Dad was the cook of course —why is that? why is it men that do the cooking on the BBQ?— and one of my childhood memories is toasting marshmallows on the embers of the used coals. That includes the time we ended up in the garage, my Dad having wheeled the BBQ in there as the weather had suddenly turned and, whilst we’d eaten dinner already, there were still marshmallows to toast! I’m telling you, the man was dedicated.
Taste as a trigger
I toasted the smaller pink marshmallow last of all and the minute I popped it in my mouth it was like being transported back to a hot summer evening in the back garden, the paddling pool on the grass, the plastic outdoor table strewn with empty plates and hastily covered containers of various condiments and sides, and the open bag, already depleted, of Princess Mallows.
The caramelised coating, caught at that perfect point just before burning. The soft inside all warm and unctuous. The fragrant sweetness unlocking memories and flooding my senses.
I could almost picture my family, Dad standing guard at the BBQ, my Mum watching from the other side of the table, and my sister and I delightedly scoffing molten-hot marshmallows as fast as we could in the hope that, if we kept eating fast enough, then we wouldn’t be stopped until the bag was empty.
It never happened, Mum always intervened as she started to clear the table and as soon as she had headed inside Dad would sneak us ‘one last one’.
Mixing the memories
Whilst my memories have a tinge of melancholy, I was pleased to realise that it was a welcome moment. I’m still at the stage of grief that at times the memories of my family tend to make me feel sad, but this is one of the first that didn’t.
Of course it helps that I’m aware that I’m also building new memories with my own son, and given how deeply I still feel the influence of my own Dad, I am hopeful that if he has such a moment in his future, it will bring him some of the comfort that it brought me.
All from a toasted marshmallow.
What are your thoughts?