A Butter Pecan Ice Cream Cone at a Baskins-Robbins in Sacramento – She Held on to Her Walker with Hands so Gnarled and Misshapen that They Were Painful to Behold
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I went to a Baskin-Robbins in Sacramento to pick up the ice cream cake – Oreo Cookie – for my grandson’s birthday party. An employee behind the counter, helping some customers with their ice cream cone purchases, told me he would be with me in a moment. As I waited, my eyes wandered without hesitation to the display case just to my right, proudly displaying on multiple tiers, a feast of beautiful and creatively decorated ice cream cakes for all ages and occasions – wow! – literally right before me a ton of temptation, and I loved it.
Then, internally I sighed for the days before my diagnosis of prediabetes when I could eat without a load of concern or guilt as much ice cream and sugar as I wanted, the diagnosis still a troubling dismay within my mind and soul whenever I entered an ice cream or frozen yogurt shop – usually only when I traveled, and usually only when a grandchild – young or nearing adulthood – was somehow involved. Such is my life, a torture for me, but a great joy and treat for the so blessed grandchildren. I have realized that buying ice cream for grandchildren is one of the best investments I – and we, with my wife – make in our retired years, with a great return of memory dividends.
After a few moments of unrequited longing, my eyes then wandered to the tubs of different ice cream flavors nearby to my left. One of the flavors seemed to be Butter Pecan, my mom’s favorite, and next to it, I spied the Pistachio and Rocky Road ice creams, two of my very best all-time favorites, ever since I was a kid.
For one of the happiest adventures of my summer vacations as a kid was riding my bike with my childhood friend, Danny, from down the street, through the back roads of Sylmar to the Thrifty Drug Store in San Fernando to get an ice cream cone that only cost five cents a scoop.
Now between the two of us, we usually had a dime or two nickels. If one of us didn’t have any money, we would first check if the other had enough, and if yes, off we would go – in the 50’s and early 60’s you could just get on your bike and travel miles away from home without having to tell your parents first where you were going.
I seem to remember once having a quarter and after hesitating for a moment, because I rarely had that much money, I told Danny we could both get two scoops, which was a great rare treat – with a double scoop, I always got two different flavors, which seemed to multiply the treat even more beyond just the two. But with two scoops, we had to be a little more careful riding back home on our bikes with the two-scoop ice cream cone in one hand – and sometimes I think we would eat the top scoop just in front of the store before we left, but that part I don’t exactly remember.
But somehow, we managed to eat all the ice cream along the way, and soon the top scoop was gone, followed perhaps more slowly by the bottom scoop, then finally devouring as another great delight, the sugar cone – which in places was already getting mushy and our hands all sticky with melted ice cream. We usually had gobbled everything down before going up the one hill on our way back home – the hill, part of a dirt road for the longest time before it was paved. Yes, I loved ice cream, and those bike rides with Dan are some of my fondest childhood memories.
And as I gazed with longing at the ice cream in the Baskin-Robbins store, I became more aware of the remaining two customers now at the counter very near to me. The one nearest me was a small – at least small now – age-deformed woman with a walker – a curved spine, upper body bent almost parallel to the floor, and her head even lower and also twisted to the right so that she was always looking sideways down at the floor with her face always hidden from my view. She held on to her walker with hands so gnarled and misshapen that they were truly painful to behold. A man was with her, talking to the employee serving them, somewhere in his 50’s it seemed, pleasant looking, and slightly round as if he also liked ice cream. I thought he was probably the woman’s son.
His mother must have told the man behind the counter what flavor she wanted, for as he reached down to get the chosen ice cream, she made her way with her walker to the small ice cream table nearest me. She stopped a foot or so away from the chair, and then attempted to pull out the chair sideways towards her a bit so she could sit down. She then stooped even a bit lower, and holding on to the walker seemingly as tightly as she was able with one gnarled hand, with her other gnarled hand, she tried to grab the under lip of the seat of the chair, but missed, then she tried again, but also missed, and then missed again once more.
Observing this, I was just about to take the two or three short steps towards her to ask her if I could help, but on the next attempt, she snagged the bottom lip of the seat and pulled it out a little sideways. Then grasping now her walker with both hands, she backed up a step or two and sat herself down.
I was amazed at the intelligence of her strategy and persistence, but then realized this was probably a familiar routine, for she didn’t ask for help or seem agitated, but seemed to know exactly what she was going to do – what the routine was – and she was successful, victorious even, all accomplished by using her mind and heart, and obviously all the strength and physical acuity she possessed. You go, lady! Good for you!
Then soon after she seated herself, her son brought her a very large single generous scoop of ice cream in an ice cream cone, which she readily took and held with one hand, and from the color and brown pieces and swirls within the ice cream, I recognized it as Butter Pecan ice cream – so, wow, perhaps my mom’s favorite ice cream was also hers.
Soon her son passed by in front me carrying his own ice cream. He paused before he sat down and smiled at me, and I smiled back and nodded my head. I gazed once more at his mother, who was eyeing and eating her ice cream with surprisingly dexterity of hand and at a surprisingly energetic pace. For she may be slow of movement, and walking, and sitting, but when it came to enjoying her favorite ice cream cone, she was a flash.
I turned now to the employee who had finally been able to come to assist me, and I told him the cake was an Oreo Cookie ice cream cake and gave him the name of my son-in-law, who had ordered the cake. He went to the back of the shop, and the shop owner brought the cake out and together they boxed it so I could take it to my grandson’s birthday party, where a big crowd of umpteen kids would absolutely devour it after gobbling down box after box of pizza. Then without me asking, the employee picked up the cake and offered to bring it out to my car for me. Very helpful and needed indeed.
When I turned to leave, I again saw the son and his mother at the small ice cream table, and she was down to the very last nibble of the ice cream in her cone. Then, all of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming familial compassion and caring for this woman whose face I had not seen and would not see, who now only saw the ground outside or the floor of the ice cream shop, and who perhaps now rarely, if ever, saw the sky, or clouds, or the moon.
I thought perhaps that she only saw sunlight upon the ground, and never as it played upon the green leaves of trees dancing overhead in the slightest of breezes. I hoped she had learned, or someone had shown her, that sunlight filtering through leaves moving even to the faintest breath of wind at times, creates an entrancing sparkling of sunlight within the living shadows upon the ground that for her is perpetually before her eyes, and that if placed within this space of flashes and sparkles, she would behold this joyous dance of nature all around her, and her shadow would place her, and the world she lives within and views, in the center of the shimmering beauty – a reminder perhaps to others, of the light that seems to also shimmer within her and in her life.
I then thought of her at a younger age – 12 through 18 – becoming a woman and a beauty, at a time when life was as free and alive and bright as the golden light of sunset upon moving water, when she had no inkling or thought that when she would be much older, her life would be encased in a bent and gnarled body.
Even so, whatever her life has been, and however long she has struggled against the twisting of her body, her spirit has not been crushed, but still seems so vibrant and so much alive. For here she was now doing the best she could, enjoying to the fullest, as much as she was able, perhaps this weekly outing – I hope – to the local Baskin-Robbins, to be treated to a Butter Pecan ice cream cone.
Perhaps her son picked her up from a retirement home she was in, to provide her this one wonderful afternoon adventure – such as my bike ice cream adventures with my friend, Dan, when I was a kid. Maybe she loved ice cream when she was a child – for which kid doesn’t – and maybe this Saturday brought back happy memories and the joy from birthdays past, and other events in her life, some just ordinary, perhaps some very touching or personally important.
Also, the thoughtfulness and tender care of the son for his mother, was a delight to behold. For when he sat down with his own ice cream cone opposite his mother, he was happy and his eyes were bright, as they were when he nodded to me, perhaps reading a gentle look upon my face. And his face and eyes reflected kindness, and a joy of still having his mom with him regardless of her struggles – such a powerful witness to the power of love – giving grace and encouragement to his mother’s own powerful witness of the enduring power and strength of the human spirit to live and thrive regardless of the circumstances life brings upon us. I hope, as I also now grow even older, I would be as resolute to choose life to the fullest as possible as she seems to have done.
As I left the shop, I thought of my own British mom, who was never as physically bent and gnarled as this brave woman, but she still suffered with old arthritic hands, and from hearing loss, and dementia. And over the final years of her dementia, she still always enjoyed her morning and evening cup of tea – “Is the tea ready?” – one of her last complete sentences to vanish into the mist of her condition – and my siblings and I always made sure she always had her tea – even to the end.
When our mom died in her own bed, in her own home, as she, and all six of us siblings wanted – while waiting for the mortuary personnel to come and take what remained of her away – my youngest sister insisted, really for all of us who had gathered at my mom’s home, that our mom was already no longer with us, and that what was left was just a thing. While waiting, we made a big pot of tea and together we had a muted and quiet – quiet at least for our family – cup of tea – a cuppa – a reverent, thoroughly British, family communion in memory of our mom. For my mom in her later years was one tough old British bird – and British to the end – and we began to realize all that was now ebbing away from us.
Now, of course, growing old is just part of human life, and for some of us, enfeeblement, physical deformities, and dementia, may also be part of the aging process. So, we should take care of ourselves, yes, but also, as we individually have capacity and opportunity, we should do what we can to assist others in overcoming, or even just coping, with the pain and physical challenges aging may bring upon us.
And perhaps even more important to our shared human existence, we should provide as much of the simple joys of life, along with the priceless gifts of continued relationships and meaningful interactions, to our parents and their aging, long-time friends, to our siblings and other relatives and neighbors, and for those we have come to value in our life, such as close long-time friends who are failing. Then also equally important, we need to teach the values and virtues of kindness and compassion to our children, and model them for our grandchildren and others, and to live them consistently and honestly in our daily lives.
For a largest part of our humaneness is our relationships and our shared needs of joy, and beauty, and comfort and love, which may take some of our resources of time and money, but the truly great things – such as again experiencing the delight of one’s favorite ice cream at the local ice cream shop – have deep rewards for those taken to the ice cream parlour, or other pleasant, once common joys.
And there are even larger rewards for those bestowing acts of kindness, good works, upon their parents or others – as this nameless son did for his old and bent mother – by giving us an example of human kindness, and here, at a local Baskin-Robbins in Sacramento, the incredible example of familial love that I am writing about, an event seen only by a few, perhaps only me, but now shared in this posting of which this son will probably never know, but for which his reward is great and will now grow and endure.
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Moments of Seeing & Occasional Pieces – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
I had completely forgotten about those bicycle trips to the Thrifty Drug Store. I remember how far away it seemed and the route, which was certainly not intuitive. Not sure how we figured out how to get there initially, riding through the maze of housing tracts on the way. I also remember the chore it was riding up that hill on Telfair and how much fun it was speeding down that same hill on the way back. We were truly blessed then.