A Pat of Butter by Erika Nichols-Frazer
My dad read A.A. Milne’s poetry to me before bedtime from the cloth-bound copy his mother had read to him. One of our favorites was “The King’s Breakfast,” in which the King says, “’Nobody could call me a fussy man; I only want a little bit of butter for my bread,’” while everybody tries to convince him that marmalade is better (spoiler alert: he gets the butter at the end). While the king could have anything he wanted, all he desires is the simple joy of a smear of butter to start his day.
I come from dairy country in Vermont, home to Cabot Creamery, Vermont Creamery, and Ploughgate butter. When my aunt visits from New York City, she makes sure to visit our grocery store and stock up on the paper-wrapped rounds of locally-made butter.
Ancient Romans used butter to ease coughs and joint pain. For 3,000 years, Hindus in India have offered gifts of ghee—clarified butter—to the god Krishna. Barrels of ancient Irish butter can still be found buried on the Emerald Isle.
At thirteen, when hospitalized for an eating disorder, I had to eat everything on my plate, including the pat of butter. It felt like punishment.
During the Great Depression and World War II, butter became scarce and was often replaced with margarine, a poor oil-based substitute for the rich and fatty substance.
“Unsalted?” my husband doesn’t bother to mask his disgust at the Land O’ Lakes butter I’d purchased in desperation, not my usual Cabot. “It was all they had left!” I defended myself. “We’re in a quarantine!” Apparently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, butter is as much of a commodity as toilet paper. When I was a teenager, despite the abundance of rich food like butter in my household, I didn’t feel worthy of the indulgence. During the pandemic, my husband and I cooked elaborate and decadent meals, buttery Dutch Babies and poached eggs with Hollandaise.
Butter sculpture is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition now displayed at most American state fairs. A life-sized cow carved from butter has been a staple at the Iowa State Fair since 1911.
There are few pleasures in life greater than warm, crusty bread slathered in rich, salted butter. I occasionally splurge for the expensive local butter marked with tear drops like a good cheddar, pockets of flavor trapped inside. I don’t deny myself butter anymore. I don’t count calories. I have learned to accept my body and its needs, to nourish it. I love the flaky butter croissants from a nearby bakery, how each bite explodes with the rich flavor, how I savor it.
Artist’s Statement
I like to home in on small details and observe them closely, through whatever genre it may be, discovering a new way to view things. This essay began with a small plastic tub of butter that I was spreading on bread at my desk. It launched me into the memory of having to eat those greasy pats of butter at a state hospital’s teen psych ward at the age of thirteen. I’m fascinated by how simple memories or objects can do that; transport us back to another reality, and how writing allows us to turn up the microscope and dig deep.
Erika Nichols-Frazer is the editor of A Tether to This World: Stories & Poems About Recovery and author of the forthcoming essay collection, Feed Me, and the forthcoming poetry collection, Staring too Closely. She won Noir Nation’s 2020 Golden Fedora Fiction Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Bloodroot Literary, Lunate, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a staff writer at her local newspaper, The Valley Reporter. She lives in Vermont