butter

a few months ago one of the ninth grade classes did something fancy, maybe a string of good grades or a long stretch of nobody showing up late, but whatever it was, i wildly announced that they earned some sort of celebration. a breakfast celebration, maybe, since our class meets most days 8-10am. they are not ones to forget things like food and the possibility of no work and they brought it up from time to time. because i am lazy, i began to try to weasel out of my promise. we were working on writing step by step directions and i suggested they find out how to make butter so we could do that in class. our celebration could be a breakfast featuring homemade butter. i knew they'd never do anything outside of class and went back to pretending i'd never said anything. they kept bringing it up. we set a date and they were supposed to bring in instructions. they didn't and the date came and went. but they brought it up again. finally we wrote it on the calendar and three of them actually brought in different ways to make butter.

we chose today because it is the last day before a very long spring break and we all knew they'd be squirrelly anyway- too squirrelly to sit down at desk for two hours. we settled on a recipe that required only one ingredient (heavy cream) and promised the quickest time for results (10 minutes). the children, suspicious of my ability to provide appropriate beverages ("the tea you drink looks like pee or grass or horrible things and it probably has crickets in it!") opted for b.y.o.b. i planned to supply everything else. because i am selfish i went shopping with my own desires at the front of my brain. nutella. lemon curd. honey. strawberry preserves. blackberry preserves. bananas. fresh bread from the bakery near school.

the kids show up. 8am. they start working on the new laptops, navigating this reading program. we're still deciding whether we like it. one child finishes early and needs something to do. i send him to a pile of twenty pink and white tulips on the desk." why are there tulips?" the kids want to know. "who brought you flowers?" "i brought them," i explain. "why?" "because it's nice when people have flowers at a breakfast table." "you're so weird!" i think it's funny that they don't know they're weird, too. so the boy goes back to the tulips armed with solemnly explained rules about what to do with them. he is silent. the other children sit at laptops. i am not at all used to the silence. the other teacher and i are quietly talking about how to use this new reading program when he looks up and laughs. he nods toward the back of the room. there is the first child, serious, towering over a tiny glass vase with two white tulips and a pink one. he has arranged them well but is not at all happy with how they look. he looks from the side. he turns them, moves one. looks again. frowns. and all this is just too sweet to bear almost but then, there, right next to him is another of the children, a boy who spent some bit of time involved with gang folks and who still thinks of himself as a bit of a badass. he is standing in front of a second vase with two pink tulips and a white one leaning out of it. he is doing exactly what the other child is doing. he looks. arranges. looks again. not a word. no discussion. he just got himself up after finishing his program and silently apprenticed himself to this other child. and the tulips look quite lovely in their vases.

everyone finishes and sits at their tables. one child at each table holds a small glass jar. we pour the jars half full of cream and tell the kids to cap them and start shaking. they can't stop laughing at first, don't quite get the point of shaking until the cream clotts. that point is written on the board but it doesn't make sense to them. finally, they start to notice a change. after about six minutes, one group yells that they have butter. it doesn't seem likely so early and i ask if they're sure. they all nod vigorously. "how do you know?" i ask and they reply, in unison, "we tasted it!" that's trust. even better, they don't have silverware. everyone dipped a finger into the jar. we sit down at tables with warm toast and butter. everyone slaps on their own toppings. i sip my tea. the kids, though, don't have anything to drink. one of the kids remembers the root beer floats the tenth graders made a few weeks ago. "you have two bottles of root beer in the fridge downstairs!" he shouts. i do. he runs down four flights to get them and runs back up with two two-liters or root beer. we eat toast with homemade butter and root beer. we have tulips. we are fancier than anyone else today.