I Can't Believe It's Butter

tales from the churn

The last time I was in Williamsburg, VA, was in 5th grade on a school field trip. I remember being fixated on the butter churn. This was the day I learned that butter starts as cream. I watched the women in colonial garb churning and realized, if I was alive at that time, that would be my role too. They wouldn’t have let me be a blacksmith and I wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. Too hot. I remember going on a walking ghost tour. I realized that, if I was dead at that time, that would be my role too. Haunting boyfriends past. Gliding down hallways in a gorgeous nightgown and making my grandchildren regret not writing to me enough.

The trip consisted of one sleepless night in a Travelodge motel. My friend Jess and I were afraid of the ghosts, and my mom was afraid of bedbugs. Luckily, neither creature visited us in the night. To our knowledge.

I made my triumphant return to Colonial Williamsburg last week, for a wedding. Weddings are amazing because you can dance to a Tina Turner song with somebody’s aunt. I went as my friend Sophia’s plus one, so she was the only familiar face in the crowd. Luckily, it’s easy to make friends at weddings. Everyone is in a good mood, sponsored by the belief in everlasting love and a signature gin fizz. Everyone is either your age, or they’re not. I met a college freshman who used her fake ID to order a vodka cran at the bar. I met a woman in her 60s who worried that her cat eye glasses would “make her look old.” I told her that I had cat eye glasses, then we laughed, then her daughter set me up with the single guy at my table. He was funny and kind and a great dancer. I may never see him again. 

Williamsburg is a town. Like many towns, there are many parts. It’s not all butter churns and blacksmith shops, it’s also a college town. The rest of my table and I went out to a local bar after the wedding ended. We walked in, dressed formally, and caught the attention of onlookers as we ordered mozzarella sticks and laid out the criteria for what makes them great*. The best part of any event is the fried food you eat after it. And then taking off your shoes. Taking off your makeup is the bad part, but it can be fun if you pretend you’ve just finished your matinee performance and are meeting the girls for lunch after. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

The morning after the wedding, we went to brunch at the home of the bride’s family friend. It was a beautifully preserved colonial with an updated kitchen. I said, too loudly, that their farmhouse sink was “my dream” to which another guest told me to “dream bigger than a sink.” I had eggnog and cheesy grits for the first time in my life. I met another girl named Rachel. I saw my Table 11 friends in the cold light of the morning. We reminisced about our night. A night that we’d never have again. I don’t know anybody’s last name.

Driving out to get back to the highway, Sophia and I passed by five pancake houses. The Smokey Griddle Pancake House, Mama Steve’s House of Pancakes, Southern Pancake and Waffle House, Not Another Pancake House, and Astronomical Pancake House. I wondered how long it took from when Williamsburg was a colony to break the first ground on the first pancake house on Richmond road. I wondered if any of the pancake house owners had rivalries. Or maybe a monthly poker game. Maybe a business summit. I wondered how so many of the same restaurants were able to coexist on one small stretch of road. Then I remembered, the town is overrun with butter. 

*The key to a perfect mozzarella stick is a crispy, structured exterior, paired with a lusciously gooey cheese center. It should be served with store-bought marinara sauce, in a red plastic basket lined with deli paper. It must be so hot that you take a bite and burn every part of your mouth. You must eat them with friends, and something cold to drink. They taste best in a bar with sports memorabilia and wooden fish hanging on the walls. And when someone else paid.