A Mommy Blog About Raising Men, Not Boys.
RSS

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Glorification of Crushed Ice Coke

Your memory can twist and mutate things so that they are different than they were at the time. It can make things more or less important, depending on what your psyche requires or demands.
This is the case, for me, with crushed ice coke.
Whenever I am served a coke with crushed ice, it's a warm day suddenly. My father and his youngest sister and I are in his green Satellite and we're out for a drive, having stopped to pick up a "crushed ice coke" for my aunt. She has raved about her want/love for them on our drive.
I suspect that she was going a bit crazy without soda pop - as at her house they were the sort the bought it by the case and at our house, we were the sort who didn't buy it at all.
This is a really happy memory, this very small snapshot and consideration of the joys of a crushed ice coke. I couldn't actually tell you if I had anything to eat, or if any of us did. But I know there were cokes and they were cold, and the ice was good to eat and crunch when the coke was all gone.
The memory doesn't evoke the fact that my Aunt was living with us at the time.
Or that she was living with us because my mom was in the hospital.
Or that my mom was in the hospital because our baby had died, and she herself nearly had.
Or that the day before we had buried our baby in the cemetary,in a small white coffin.

Somehow, in my little persons brain, all of those sad things weren't part of crushed ice coke, which would cause me to most likely shun it forever more.

Instead of it being a sad day, it was just a day out for a drive, with my favorite Aunt - and on that day I learned the joy of a crushed ice coke. And to this day, I smile when I get one and remember how happy I was for a few minutes once - during such a hard time.

2 comments:

Phoenix Psaltery said...

Crushed ice cokes are a little taste of heaven. It's wonderful that our brains can filter out the sadness and keep the things that are joyous.

amanda said...

So strange to be brought to wistful tears with a smile on my face. Lovely.