AnchorMommy

Lessons learned from an ice cream accident

August 31, 2009 by Shannon

What is it about ice cream that makes me so nostalgic and reflective? Earlier this summer, a stop at our favorite ice cream shop took me on a trip down memory lane. Now, I have come to see the lesson in the gravest of ice cream accidents: a dropped scoop.

I should have seen it coming. I opted for a sugar cone because the last time we ordered Kellan a regular cone, he ate it so slowly that it got completely soggy. I figured a sugar cone would withstand his slooooow eating habits. However, it did not have a lip to help hold the scoop on the cone.

Sure enough, not five minutes after we started eating, he dropped his scoop. It happened just as I turned away to grab my camera. I looked back, and the delicious blob of chocolaty frozen goodness had plopped onto the concrete below. I immediately experienced some sort of flashback to my own childhood, and felt the urge to cry. Weird, I know.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said to Kellan. “You tipped your cone and it fell off.” He just stared at the ice cream as it turned to soup on the hot patio. Since I nearly welled up, my first reaction was to head off any possible tears from Kellan, and I started transferring some of my ice cream to his cone. When I handed it back, I said, “Here. You can share mine! It’s really good.”

Kellan was completely unfazed. He did not cry. He did not ask for more. He didn’t even pout. Once I refilled his cone, he continued to touch his tongue to the ice cream — ever so slowly — as if nothing had happened. It dripped down his chin and all over his clothes. He took his first ever bite of a sugar cone and declared, “Mmm. Good!”

Watching his reaction reminded me of what may seem like a very simple lesson — when you lose hold of something, let it go with an open heart because something else will surely come in its place. I am taking this lesson to heart right now, because two nights before the ice cream accident, I had a dream that I was back in the newsroom. I woke up feeling wistful. Mind you, I am 100% happy with the decision I have made to spend more time with my husband and son (and enjoy more ice cream with them) but I would be dishonest if I said that there wasn’t a teeny tiny little piece of me that still longs for a place in the work force.

I needed a reminder. A reminder that I was right to follow my heart. A reminder that what I’m doing now is something I will look back on and be grateful for in the years to come. A reminder that I’m a lucky mom to have a boy that doesn’t cry over dropped ice cream scoops, even when his own mom is dabbing at her eyes with a sticky, paper-thin, ice cream shop napkin.