Dear Butter

Hey you,

It’s been a while. There was a moment – I want to say six months ago? – that you seemed more available. That soon changed.

You were a pantry staple. Now you are the political and the personal. You are trenchant amidst a cast of fleeting pretenders rolling off the conveyor belt. You’re an Influencer in a pale yellow one-piece on a yacht called Chakra just off the coast of Croatia.

From your humble working-class factory/farm origins you would go stratospheric and we would soon long for the days when we could have you all over our bread or make a swan sculpture from you in your honour. Margarine has that market cornered now. But margarine is ‘new money’. Margarine is a beach house in Success Court, Omaha. You’re old-school-mid-century-secluded; beach access only.

We go back, no doubt. As a kid, there you were – a comforting remedy in a small bowl of mashed eggs. Is there nothing you don’t elevate? You with steak. You, on your own – dangerous, desirable – right off the knife edge.

I was missing you hard so I stalked you online in “Papers Past”. In April 1965, a headline in a Wellington newspaper quoted the head of the Dairy Board: “Butter far too cheap”. He knew where you were headed. In the 70s the tabloids slut-shamed you saying you’d go with anyone – London, Australia, Asia and Canada. You were just spreading your wings, adding flavour in your wake. You became a household name. You started hanging in a new crowd with names like Fraiche, Freya and Fonterra.

You’ve gone up 65 percent in a year. You’re a Lambo #becauselambo #blessed #fastlife and I’m a grey Toyota hybrid #ihavenothing

I took the hybrid to the supermarket the other day and surprise! there you were, chilling out, elusive … hardened? You’re the centre of the universe there, too.

Another woman was blocking the way to you. She wore a soft woollen beret the colour of pale Japanese mushrooms in a bowl of ramen and a long coat in Remuera cream.

I wore a black fake-fur coat, keeping my game fly just in case I saw you and was grateful I had – the dairy section was farkin freezing. I know you like it that way but seriously … are you OK?

She had her back to me but she seemed either in a state of deep contemplation or paralysed by the price of you (500g $9.49 salted). Her trolley blocked the way and I didn’t want to barge in, so in the spirit of solidarity I said, “Crazy huh,” thinking we’d eyeroll, have a sad little laugh and walk away.

She turned to me and looked me right in the eye. Her face was pale and her eyes were concrete grey and she looked mad. Mad at me, mad at everything. But not, as it turned out, mad at you.

“It’s a baaaaargain,” she said, spreading out the ‘A’ in a way both extravagant and reckless, and opposite to the way we now might spread you over everything. I thought she was being either facetious or dead-pan. So I laughed and said, “Right?” thinking, again, we would all move on with our miserable lives.

Her eyes turned colder: “Everyone needs to stop going on about the price of butter.”

Clippings from Papers Past

I get it. We must all speak from our worth and not our wound. There comes a time when everyone needs to stop talking about it. But she doesn’t know you like I do. I have loved you long and I loved you hard and I have loved you at room temperature. I’ve seen you triumphant and in a hot-mess after some douchebag left you abandoned on a kitchen bench in peak summer. How dare she presume she had the scoop on you and how dare you and … Actually you know what, f*&k you. I wish I’d never met you. You’ve always been superficial and ambitious. I bet you’re hanging out with the Mowbrays now. They give ‘Own Brand substitute spread in a plastic tube’ vibes but whatever, you go ahead and follow the monied and their side-by-side fridges with plumbed in ice-makers. It’s not fair. It makes me want to do something irrational and spread 50g of you all over a single Salada cracker.

I was standing there, inert, thinking this but all I managed was a feeble “Um OK.”

She continued. This is verbatim: “When I think of what my mother paid for butter in the 50s and 60s we could not afford it. We are lucky – we complain too much.”

All good.
Apparently not:
“Look at State Houses – that’s what happens when the government gets involved.”

And:
“There are no poor people in New Zealand – no one is starving. People donate food all the time.”

And:
“When you think of what you pay for meat in Italy …” [I don’t, as a rule, but go hard] “… it’s $78 a kilo … we are doing fine.”

Again:
“People moan about the price of butter but they have no idea how good we have it.”

Right. Then, leaning in, more conciliatory:

“Look, people think I’m a lone voice but we have to stop and think how lucky we are. Not everyone thinks the way I do.”

I grabbed you, holding you, wanting your creamy promises with nutty overtones, and for a minute you felt like a molotov in my hand, for all the heat and freight you carried.

“Ah well it’s interesting to hear all points of view,” I replied, insincerely.

She was still talking but I was halfway down the aisle nearer the ready meals: heat-and-eat pies, pastries and potato gratin in tinfoil trays. Because let’s be honest, who can afford to bake from scratch in these cooked times.

Then I go home, thinking I’ll pour myself a large glass of marked-down buttery chardonnay and try to forget about you. No chance. You’re on the radio! A listener had texted in to Checkpoint on RNZ saying why can’t we break into our Kiwisaver to pay for butter? Fair.

There’s even a brilliant cartoon by Sharon Murdoch about you, and our Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was telling everyone to calm down while he’s blithely drinking milk from champagne glasses.

What I would say to you is: Where will you go to my lovely, when you’re alone on the shelf? I don’t even know who you are anymore. God I miss you.