S’mores.

Summer.

Summer.

S’mores.

The words even sound kind of alike, at least if you pronounce the food the way I do, as if it weren’t a contraction: Suh-mores. Some mores. My husband laughs when I say it, insisting it’s “smoores” all squished together.

However you pronounce them, s’mores and summer are inextricable. I love everything about the treat– the whole process. I love holding the stick over the flame, waiting patiently for golden brown. I was never one to burn my marshmallow on purpose. No way.

I love moving clockwise around the campfire to avoid getting smoke in my eyes. “Smoke follows beauty,”  someone said once when I was a kid, and I took it to heart, feeling a tiny smugness when I again had to squint, believing, like kids who are told constantly that they are beautiful and wonderful do, that there was something unique and special about me, something so inherent that even the elements couldn’t deny it.

I love the way the chocolate melts when the marshmallow touches it and the way the grahm cracker breaks, crumbling in your hand or on the plate as you take a bite, the crunch contrasting with the chewiness and the gooey goodness. All of it. It’s all so fun and delicious and so a part of my favorite season that making s’mores has become almost a sacred ritual. So when I learned Trader Joe’s has vegan marshmallows, I was pretty excited.

Making s’mores with my kids is the best, as is doing anything with them that I loved to do as a kid. We went to a party when I was little. The kids were in the woods roasting marshmallows and the adults were somewhere else and I felt very grownup being allowed to stay with the big kids for this ritual. Before walking away, my mom told me I could have three marshmallows. I remember so vividly the miscounting I did that night– one of my first and only memories of being truly sneaky. “One,” I would say to myself after three or four marshmallows. “Two,” I’d say after a few more. The funny part is that I bothered counting. Instead of just breaking the rules, I had to lie to myself. I was already very much me.

It makes me wonder, too, about my children– their personalities, their inner worlds and monologues. What are they saying to themselves? It makes me think too, about the differences in our childhoods. How old was I at this party in the woods? How far was the campfire from the adults? Am I misremembering the sense of independence because I was so little or was I really out in the woods by a fire without any adults nearby? This article has been making the rounds in my circles this week, and it makes me think again, as I do pretty regularly, about parenting right now, in this place and time. Would I let my kids roast marshmallows with older kids out of my sight? How old would they have to be? Is my hesitation about this a sign of different childhood settings, different times, or some combination of those?

It isn’t about them eating too many marshmallows, I’m fairly certain, so for now, I will give them s’mores. Some more. Some more s’mores.

How do you pronounce s’mores? Do you have any memories of being sneaky as a little kid? Tell me about them in the comments!