Burned Waffles

Why smoke alarms give me panic attacks

When I teach students in the archives, I warn them that the primary sources on their tables could potentially trigger strong reactions, even if the sources seem innocuous. “I was going through a folder of documents on WIC from 1994,” I tell students, “The records probably wouldn’t bother you at all, but I was a child on WIC in 1994. The policy documents on who was eligible for benefits sent me into a spiral for a good hour.”

Most of us have small incidents in our lives that exert unwelcome influence on how we live. For me, one of those incidents involves smoke detectors.

For the first seven years of my life, we lived in a small, white house on my grandparents’ beef farm, which had been converted from a farm outbuilding into a residence. Our position across the driveway from the main farmhouse suited all parties; my grandparents measured their children’s love by geographic proximity, and my parents were happy to pay almost nothing for housing.  

On this particular day, it was a sunny summer morning, and the cows were out. We usually realized that the cows had escaped the lower pasture when the car horns started honking, alerting us that the cows had wandered into the road and blocked traffic.

My grandparents must have been away, because my mom was the one who ran down the road to herd the lumbering cows back into the pasture. The sight of her running down the road in her pajamas must have been hilarious for the motorists, but I didn’t see it.  

I assume that Mom gave me instructions when she left, but it wasn’t necessary, and she knew that. I had already learned to take responsibility, whether she asked me to or not.

Waffles were cooking in the ancient metal waffle iron on top of the rolling dishwasher. Like everything else we had, it was old and had been handed down from someone who no longer needed it.  

It wasn’t until the smoke alarm started blaring that I realized something was wrong. The small kitchen was filled with smoke, and my four-year-old brain registered that something was on fire. It was the waffles. Mom had forgotten the waffles in her haste to leave the house. 

Braving the smoke and the deafening alarm, I darted into the kitchen. I remembered that you put out fires with water, so I grabbed a two-cup measuring pitcher, filled it with water from the kitchen sink, and poured the contents all over the waffle iron. The waffle iron steamed and hissed as the water danced along the hot metal surface. But it was futile—the waffle inside kept burning. 

I didn’t know what else to do, so I dragged my brother out of the smoke-filled house into the gravel driveway. He clutched his stuffed brontosaurus by its limp neck, and I frantically tried to keep him from running off to find Mom. It seems far-fetched that this occurred when I was 4, but surely I would remember if I were 5 and needed to carry my newborn sister out of the house. I didn’t know what to do. We stood there in the driveway while the alarm rang and rang.

At some point, my mom must have returned. There are large gaps in this story where my mom should have been—the sound of the alarm and the smell of smoke are imprinted on my memory, but I only remember her absence.  

For the rest of the day, the house was filled with the acrid smell of smoke, even though we flung all of the windows open. Like the smoke, my terror refused to go away. I kept replaying the scene in my head, as if I needed to do penance for failing to extinguish the fire. Why hadn’t I grabbed the cloth-wrapped waffle iron cord and yanked it out of the wall? Why hadn’t I realized that water wouldn’t solve the problem? I replayed my failure again and again.

Fill the measuring cup. Pour the water out. Fill the measuring cup. Pour the water out. But the fire kept burning. And I was alone.