Burnt Sugar

what happens when nostalgia strikes

My son and I were waiting at a long traffic light yesterday after an early dentist appointment. He was in the passenger seat, I was driving and between us sat an arm rest that pops up and becomes a storage bin. It’s a built-in space between driver and passenger, a car design element that has existed longer than my son’s fifteen years. 

An early 1980’s Oldsmobile Cutlass was in front of us, pale blue with rectangular tail lights above a chrome bumper. We could see the silhouettes of the driver and his passenger through the wide rear-view window. The passenger’s wild curly hair tilted and leaned into the driver, the two becoming one at times. Her arm stretched over his shoulder, her hand touching his long hair, curling it with her fingers. My son couldn’t understand how this scene worked. How could they be sitting so close together, so intimate, with all that exists between the seats of a car? I explained the bench seats of yesteryear. How, before seat belts, you could slide across the vinyl when the driver took a sharp turn. How, in our 1976 baby blue Pontiac station wagon, there was always a sister riding between our parents on long drives, a small head barely visible from the back seat. How my bare legs would stick to the hot vinyl in the heat of summer. The Cutlass may have had a cloth and vinyl combination on the bench. It could have been a split bench, 60/40 passengers to driver.  Either way two people could cuddle together, one at the wheel, one in the middle, for the whole drive. It was a revelation for the 15 year-old.

I dropped my him in front of the basketball hoops and flapping flags of his high school. It was a timeless scene, and I stayed in this place of nostalgia for the rest of the day. 

That afternoon while combining white sugar and a touch of water to make caramel, I travelled to grade eight science class. We were burning sugar on a bunsen burner to observe how matter can change from a solid to a liquid when heated. Tonia, Valerie I were huddled around a bunsen burner on an octagonal table watching the tiny crystals melt into a liquid, then bubble and morph in colour into amber, to black then suddenly a strong, smoky, orange flame. Our calm, moustached teacher glided over in his chocolate brown trousers and gum-soled shoes and put out the flame. He then reviewed what he had told us at the beginning: don’t let the sugar burn.

Exactly when the sugar shifted to deep amber and a tiny wisp of smoke appeared, I pulled the pan off the stove and poured the molten sugar onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. It rolled around then began to harden, capturing tiny bubbles inside the amber. I moved the tray into the light. It shimmered - like tanned skin slathered in coconut oil, like golden powder swept across the eyes of a woman driving shotgun in an Oldsmobile Cutlass, like the amber glass in a 1970’s kitchen cupboard. I smashed the caramel and danced the shards over the top of the cake I was making for my friend’s 50th birthday. To celebrate this milestone, she has said yes to 50 adventures over the past year. She jumped out of an airplane tethered to a man and floated with him - in what she referred to as a giant Baby Bjorn - for the most glorious few minutes of her life until they gently landed on the ground. She did a keg stand with her boys at a university party. She sailed in a women’s foiling clinic. She did goat yoga (true story). And through it all, she wore sparkles. A chocolate cake with salted caramel frosting topped with shards of shimmering amber for a sparkling woman born in the 1970’s seemed apropos. 

I packed up the cake and brought it to the birthday girl. Over my shoulders was my new suede jacket, fringe and all, found last week in a thrift store while shopping in NY with my friend Dana. When I asked her if she thought I should buy it, she was wearing a cowboy hat, found on a shelf. “Wrap it up,” she said, unequivocally. A suede fringed jacket isn’t my usual look, but something about it felt familiar. Later that night a friend said it reminded him of someone from his childhood. Was it the woman from the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Simone? And then I remembered. It wasn’t Simone, it was Sloane. Ferris’s girlfriend, who wore a white fringed leather jacket with matching cowboy boots. We all loved Sloane, with her heart-shaped face, her casual cool, her love for Ferris, and, that jacket. You could say nostalgia made me buy it. Nostalgia makes me do a lot of things.

PS If you too would like to make some edible amber glass, I found this video of a pregnant Claire Ptak of Violet Bakery making caramel shards on Youtube. You can watch it here. The ratio for one batch is about 3/4 cup of white sugar to 2 tablespoons of water.

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In other news, I loved listening to lighting designer Lindsey Adelman on this episode of Time Sensitive. I am sensitive to lighting, as are my sisters, my mother, her sisters, her late mother… This conversation feels like the warmest light, the kind you want to lean into.

If you’re still in the listening mood, this Ideas episode featuring artist Joan Jonas, recorded from her home in Cape Breton, was an inspiration.

And last but not least, I took the new jacket out last night. The fringe loved the Dyson hand dryers!