When I pulled out my laptop to blog tonight my daughter said "you should blog about ice cream." That wasn't necessarily what was on my mind tonight, and to be fair my daughter has never read this blog, but I was intrigued none the less. And so here I am, writing a blog about ice cream. I don't care for ice cream. Actually, in general I am not a fan of dairy...I have a hard time disassociating the milk in my glass from the milk in a cow...that's just me....it is a weird quirk that I wish I didn't have...and it is admittedly selective. I can eat a box of milk chocolate no problem....analyze away haha. That being said, I have some fond memories of ice cream.
When I was a kid we didn't have money for "extras" but there was a local grocery store that had a coupon style program where you could earn points that added up to a free loaf of bread, free milk, or.....a 4 liter pail of ice cream. For my brothers and I as kids, walking to the grocery store to shop was a part of our errands and we would happily carry home a pail of chocolate ice cream as a part of our load. Sometimes we would even melt the ice cream and call it ice milk and eat it like a cold chocolate soup and laugh.
Ice cream also reminds me of this one time I was hanging out with my friends after my summer landscaping job. For the summer they were living in an apartment near a trailer park, the two areas were separated by a chain link fence. On this particular lazy summer afternoon we were enjoying the sun on the balcony when we heard the inimitable sound of the ice cream truck. We were way too lazy to make it all the way downstairs in time for a sweet treat and watched it slowly drive past us. When out of nowhere a dude about our age (late teens/early twenties) jumped over the chain link, snagging and ultimately ripping off his t-shirt in the process. He ran down the truck what seemed like two blocks. And on his way past us headed home (shirtless now but carrying some frozen treats) we hollered "was it worth it?!" and he nodded that it was.
Pretty recently I got back into ice cream by way of dairy free ice cream bars. There are some really fantastic ones out there. Also some delicious sorbets that are dairy free in the grocery stores these days. This is definitely not what I had intended on writing about, but reflecting on some of the more positive moments from my childhood isn't something I do very often. It can be easy for me to paint all those years with a big ol' trauma paintbrush and discount the moments of joy and happiness. Which of course there were too. My girls know very little about my childhood...funny how they are able to guide me to the light, even with no awareness of the darkness.
-Amanda
