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Broke Wife, Big City
A
chocolate cone with M&M’s, please
By Aprill Brandon
I took my kids to get ice cream today.
That’s it. There’s no punchline. There’s no funny anecdote. No moral.
No bittersweet ending. No big lesson.
Just...I got ice cream with my kids today.
My son, who is 5, chose chocolate. In a cone. With M&M’s on top. He
was emphatic about that. Lots and lots of M&M’s, please. I suspect
it was the please that made the women behind the counter add extra,
turning it into an M&M cone with a hint of ice cream.
My daughter, who is 2, then chose chocolate. In a cone. With, and
here’s the twist, M&M’s on top. Lots and lots, pwease. The counter
woman practically dumped the entire M&M bin over her cone.
My son ate his like someone twice his age. Methodical. Minimal damage.
A mature grasp of the melt-to-dripping timing. He even sat on his
napkin so it didn’t blow away, an advanced outdoor eating move, if I do
say so myself.
My daughter ate hers like a feral baby wolf. Just ate it with her
entire face. Napkin? Who has time for that? By the time she was done,
she was more chocolate than girl, inside and out. Luckily, most of the
chocolate wiped off when she ran to me and gave me a big, sticky,
spontaneous hug.
And that’s it. Then we went home.
We didn’t even talk about anything interesting. I remember Riker was
telling a rather long story about a robot who could turn different
colors, which led to Mae telling me an even more disjointed story about
how she was a robot cat who loved purple.
So why am I even bothering to write this down, to share this with you?
To be honest, this one’s more for me. I want to remember this moment.
How small their hands looked holding those giant waffle cones. How big
their eyes got when they took that first bite. The way the sunlight
glinted off their red hair. How good the spring breeze felt.
When you first become a parent, you never think you’ll forget anything.
They lay that baby on your chest and that moment is emblazoned on your
mind and heart like a tattoo. And so you think it will always be like
that. That you’ll remember every beautiful minute with them from then
on with complete and utter clarity; the way they yawned, the way they
smelled, the way they grasp your finger in their iron grip.
But you do forget. No matter how hard you stare at them, no matter how
many photos you take, the moments still slip away on the relentless
tides of time.
I don’t even remember what my daughter’s first word was anymore.
I’m always writing about my life, my family, my feelings, my failings.
But in-between all the writing, all the reflecting, all the
making-sense-of and making-fun-of, in-between all the updates and
photos and pithy comments, is ordinary, boring, old life. Like today. A
day that was full but ultimately added up to nothing because life
doesn’t always make a good narrative. There was no epiphany, no greater
meaning gleaned from anything.
There was only ice cream.
But I don’t want to forget it.
So, today, I took my kids to get ice cream. And it was a glorious,
chaotic, loud, exasperating and beautiful mess.
The end.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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