It was a tradition to have pancakes for breakfast every Saturday morning. This particular one I woke up to the bright sunlight hitting my face. After I finally decided to open my eyes after refusing for several minutes, the first thing I directly saw was the bare white ceiling. I tilted my head to the left and could see my neighbor’s bright green lawn and vibrant purple flowers. As I got out of bed and started walking, I could feel the soft carpet under my feet. In the hallway, on the walls were the doodles of a small child bursting with color that seemed to be practically begging for attention. When I stepped onto the tile of the restroom the warmth of the carpet left my feet as they hit the cold tile floor.

When I finished brushing my teeth and walked back through the hallway, I could feel the comfort of the carpet again. Arriving at the top of the stairwell, I could start to smell the aroma of the sweet maple syrup. When I looked down, I could see my brother walking toward the kitchen.

My mom was at the bottom of the stairwell with one hand one the railing, “You ready to eat?”, she said with a cheery smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

“Yeah, of course! Just like every week!” I replied, equally as happy.

I walked down the brown stairs and into the kitchen while the aroma grew even stronger. I could see plates filled with golden brown pancakes and bowls with blueberries and strawberries. They were on the grey granite countertops on top of the mahogany shelves. My brother noticed me standing in the kitchen.

“Don’t you have a soccer game today?”

“Yeah, but it’s late in the afternoon.”

My mom interrupted with, “C’mon guys, let’s eat I’m starving!”

We were about to start eating when I noticed something.

“Where’s the maple syrup?”

My brother’s eyebrows furrowed, and my mom’s eyes widened.

“Who had it last?”, she said while rising from the table about to go look for it.

“Not me.”, my brother and I both said in unison, while also getting up to try and figure out where it had gone.

We looked in the fridge, in the shelves, the pantry. It was nowhere to be found. But it had to be somewhere right? I had seen it only a couple of days ago, it could not have just disappeared into thin air. After a couple of minutes of digging through the kitchen some more, we were all about ready to give up.

But then my brother had an idea, “There’s one place we haven’t looked! The freezer!”

“Yes, because the maple syrup would be in the freezer”, I replied not convinced.

He walked over and pulled open the shiny silver door and was hit by a blast of cold air. He started to move some of the things, in the freezer out of the way, the frozen vegetables, ice cream pizza bites.

“There’s no point, it’s not in there”, I said rolling my eyes.

“Oh yeah, then what is this!”, he exclaimed holding the plastic jar of edible liquid gold.

“Oh well, I guess it is there”, I started to walk back to the table.

After all the food was finally on the table, we were ready to begin eating. And to this day, we still don’t know how the maple syrup wound up in the freezer.