Butter Days

It is a classic sweltering hot afternoon in Florida. I have only been out of the air conditioning for three minutes and I already feel the sweat on my brow and, frankly, everywhere else. But as I sit and wait, I wonder if the sweat is all due to the Florida weather. My hands are shaking and I can’t stop my leg from bouncing like a basketball. 

Nerves.

Yet I don’t dwell on my nerves or what is causing them. I don’t dwell on the minutes passing by as I wait. I go back to a place only my mind’s eye can see. Way back to a time where cell phones weren’t a thing but big hairstyles and leg warmers were. I smile at the absurdity of what was so normal then, and I continue to smile as I recall one particular afternoon, one just as hot as this one.

I was six, and I knew after my first day of first grade that I hated school and I refused to ever go back.

The last bell of the day rang and I ran straight to where my mom’s car was waiting for me out front. We pulled away from the treacherous elementary school as kids of all grades were still pouring out of every door on the brick building. My mom didn’t say anything until we were a few minutes down the road. Pink Floyd was playing on the radio, I can’t remember which song it was now. Wish You Were Here? Comfortably Numb? My mom was humming along, something I normally did with her even though I didn’t know a single word. 

Finally she asked, “Well, how was your day, sugar?”

“I hate school,” I mumbled.

“Ah, don’t say hate,” she scolded me. “Why don’t you like it?”

I took in a deep breath until I felt my little lungs swell up and said, “Because it’s stupid.” That’s when the tears started to form in my eyes. I didn’t know how to express that I felt lonely when the other kids talked and laughed together at lunch with their meals packed by their parents. I didn’t know how to say I felt stupid when the teacher gave us a math handout and I got all the answers wrong. I was six, dammit, I didn’t know much. But I did know that I felt stupid and lonely, and that I was hellbent on never feeling such terrible emotions again.

“How can school be stupid?” my mom asked. “They teach you not to be stupid. School can’t be stupid.” She handed me a napkin that had been sitting on the console and I wiped my nose on it. 

“I’m not going back,” I slurred defiantly through my tears. Even as I said it, I knew it was useless.

“Sure you are,” my mom said. I cried more. It seemed she was against my plan to never feel lonely and stupid again, and that meant she would have to be my enemy for the time being. 

I crossed my arms and furrowed my brows as furiously as I could, then looked out the window at the trees and rundown buildings passing by.

“Don’t worry, sugar, I know what will make you feel better.”

“What?” I pouted.

The car bounced as it went over the curb and into the parking lot of a small grey building. There was a flashing blue sign that read “OPEN” and a small red and pink striped awning just above the door. There was a sign hanging from the awning that read “Pete’s Sweet Treats” with a picture of a vanilla ice cream cone next to it.

Ice cream. 

My stomach said yes but my defiant attitude toward the world said to my mother, “I don’t want ice cream.”

Without missing a beat, she shrugged, rolled down the passenger side window, turned the car off and said, “Fine, but I do. Be right back. Don’t talk to strangers.” It was clear she didn’t care if I made her my enemy. This just made me even more angry, and I scrunched my eyebrows even tighter.

After a few minutes my mom returned with the most amazing ice cream cone I had ever seen. Two scoops of butter pecan ice cream, full of pecan chunks and topped with bits of crushed pecans. My eyes widened for a second before I remembered I was supposed to be angry. I quickly turned away, hoping my mom hadn’t noticed.

“Still don’t want any?” she asked as she climbed into the driver’s side.

I shook my head like I was surrounded by bees.

“Alright,” she said. “Oh, crap. I gave you my last napkin. Here, hold this.” And she shoved the ice cream cone at me. I stared at it, unsure if I should break my anger spell. “Take it, go on,” my mom said with a bit more urgency in her voice. I took it and felt the weight of it in my little first-grader hands. My mom rushed back inside, looking back over her shoulder to shout, “And don’t spill any!”

Ten seconds passed and drops of melted butter pecan ice cream began to form and spill over the ring of the cone. Fifteen seconds. The drop would touch my hand if I didn’t do something. There were no napkins. 

My mom told me not to spill. I had to do something. 

Just before the first drop could touch my hand, I leapt into action.

I licked the ice cream, and I did not stop licking it until both scoops were in my digestive system and I was halfway through munching the cone.

Of course, my mom had planned this. Two minutes after she had left to get napkins she showed up with a second butter pecan cone. She smiled like nothing happened and we sat and enjoyed the rest of our ice cream together. The second day of first grade seemed significantly less daunting in that moment.

This became the norm for us over the years. When I would have a bad day, we would load up in the car and head to Pete’s Sweet Treats. Sometimes I would try a different flavor, but nothing did the trick quite like two scoops of butter pecan on a cone with crushed pecan bits on top.

A crow lands on the bench and screams in my face, shaking me back to the present. 

I had been so focused on that memory, I forgot all about the heat, the sweat dripping down my face, the bustle of the people around me. It is a shock to my system as I take it all in, the afternoon sun glaring me down. The stupid bird screams again.

“Go away,” I tell it. I wave my arms at him until he gets the message and flies off. Scavenger. 

I have a small problem with birds, especially ones that get bird poop on your dress just before the middle school dance and your best friend Beckie ditches you for a cute guy instead of helping you clean off the bird poop.

Oh yeah, Mom and I got ice cream after that one. And I tended to avoid birds since then, too.

I was constantly late to English class in 9th grade because our band teacher always went over time. My English teacher gave me my first detention ever in the first week of high school. We got ice cream that afternoon. And the afternoon a boy rejected me after asking him on a date. He said girls in band were losers. I cried. We got ice cream.

Then out of no where, Pete’s Sweet Treats was no more.

We were both having a good day, driving with the windows down and singing to Pink Floyd. My mom didn’t even notice the tape over the door or the missing sign that used to dangle from the awning. I noticed, and I gasped so loud my mom swerved and slammed on the brakes.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you?”

I pointed.

She gasped.

We drove over to the parking lot and walked up to the front door. It was locked, chain and all. We peaked in through the glass windows. Empty. Just empty.

We stood in silence for a moment. My mom began to speak.

“Ma’am?” a voice like a mime’s rope yanks me back to the present. I’m so frustrated at being violently taken from my moments with my mom that I frighten the girl in the light blue hat that reads “Swirl’s Ice Cream”. She takes a half step back as I glare up at her. “Uh, ma’am, did you order the butter pecan?”

I compose myself, shame taking over. “Sorry about that. I was, uh, thinking.”

“Butter pecan?” she holds the cone out to me.

I take it with a smile and thank her.

The nerves had left when I was deep down memory lane, but now they return. Hands shaking. Foot tapping the ground like a drill.

I haven’t had a butter pecan ice cream since Pete’s closed over twenty years ago. Why did it have to close down so soon, so abruptly? It wasn’t fair.

This cone can’t be nearly as good. There aren’t even crushed pecan bits on top.

Drops have already begun to form and spill over the edge of the cone.

I think I’ll throw it away. Can't taste disappointment if it's in the trash, right?

The drop almost reaches my hand.

No, Mom wouldn’t want me to throw it away. I almost feel her watching me through the glass windows of Swirl’s Ice Cream, waiting on her own secret second cone. She knows I’m going to eat it. She’s been gone for almost a year now, but even she knows.

So I do. I sit there and I eat it.

Suddenly I’m crying. I don’t know when I started crying, but people are staring. A child points and giggles. Why shouldn’t he? A middle-aged woman inhaling a butter pecan ice cream as she sobs into it? I would laugh at me, too. 

I'm not sure if the tears come from disappointment or relief. No, the ice cream doesn’t taste anything like Pete’s. And honestly? Thank God it doesn’t.

No ice cream on this planet is supposed to taste like Pete’s butter pecan on a hot afternoon sitting in the car with my mom. Laughing at dumb boys and dumb Beckies. Plotting the downfall of my English teacher. I can’t expect this ice cream or any other ice cream to bring that back. The butter pecan ice creams of the world are never going to taste like that again, not exactly.

And that’s okay. That’s how it should be.