They Screamed for It, But They Scream a Lot Anyway

Mama came home from work yesterday afternoon for a two-hour break. She had a gap between afternoon and evening shifts long enough to appease employment regulations, but not long enough to do anything much more meaningful than knocking off a couple backlogged shows from the DVR, and by “DVR” I still sadly mean “VCR.”

How did she spend those two hours? Did she watch television? No, there’s nothing good on in the afternoon and the VCR was filled with Dora and Sesame. Did she play with the kids in the park? No, we’ve had a lot of April showers recently, and they’ve left the ground swampy in some parts, and oceanic in others. Did she take a nap? No, she drove up and announced one of the greatest five-word phrases in the English language.

“Let’s get some ice cream,” she said.

The weather is warming up in Iowa, thus giving the local ice cream shops their opportunity to open. Ice cream is available year round in many Iowa restaurants, but most of these places sell ice cream as a side business, relying on sales from the grill to limp through the winter months. The local places with good ice cream, the places with character, the places that can dip cones into one of five different vats of hot waxy goo all close during the cold months. Finally, after a long hard winter of settling for Dairy Queen, we can visit the bushy-eyebrowed guy who runs the ice cream shop down the street.

We quickly loaded the kids in the car and drove to the shop. Even though it’s “just down the street,” it’s still three miles “down the street,” which is too far to walk with three children, two of which are unable to follow directions and the other one is unwilling.

I picked out a cone dipped in cherry wax; maybe next time I’ll get the peppermint wax. Ellie picked out a malt made with real strawberries. Abbie had a kid’s cone picked out for her. A kid’s cone is a wonderful creation offered by only the best ice cream shop. It’s small, making it easy to hold and limiting the potential for mess when the child inevitably dumps it on the floor anyway. The boys, unlike Abbie, are too young to realize they’re entitled to ice cream when we stop, so they got nothing until we returned home.

My cone was gone by the time we returned. Ellie had dented her malt. Abbie had thrown her cone on the floor. The boys had noticed something didn’t quite seem fair about the trip.

We pulled the kids inside, and mama finished her malt with the kids’ help. Abbie knew exactly what it was and sidled up to her open-mouthed, baby bird style. The boys were unfamiliar with it, and didn’t know what to do. Ellie offered them her straw, but they chewed on it. She spooned a little into Ian’s mouth, but he let it dribble onto his shoe, perhaps believing that its iciness meant daddy had forgotten to microwave supper again. Tory knew what to do with his first spoonful, though, and Ian quickly grasped the idea.

Soon, the malt disappeared, and our first trip of the season became a memory. We’ll move to our beautiful new home in about a month, so we might not make many more trips. We need to savor every waxy dip remnant that sticks in our teeth.