It arrived on the wings of a sweetly fragrant summer breeze, a distant melody so deeply familiar that my husband and I instinctively began to hum as it drew nearer: Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro.…
The ice cream truck, with its plinking, tinny soundtrack, was an aural cornerstone of both our childhoods, and we grinned at each other from across the yard the first time we heard it pass the house. Hooray, we shouted to our baby girl, not then quite two. The ice cream man is here! It seemed so quintessentially country, so sweetly small-town to have a ramshackle refrigerator truck festooned with the bright happy pictures of its sugary wares idle past our newly purchased home. One of us ran to grab a wallet and the other flagged the ice cream man down. Sitting on the sagging front porch steps with a lime ice melting blissfully on my tongue, the shrill music of the truck fading into the distance and my daughter covered in vanilla and chocolate, I felt a new kind of happiness. We were a family, a home-owning family. A home-owning family living in sweet, sleepy Sonoma where simple pleasures like delivered ice cream on a hot summer day were de rigueur. Life was beautiful.
An hour later he drove by again. Can you tie ‘em in a knot, can you tie ‘em in a bow… Still smiling, we waved as he passed. Our little girl – a quick study – tugged at the hem of my shorts, pointed at the crooked little truck and shouted “again!” Easily diverted at two, I swept her into my arms for a kiss and plopped her into her swing, where she happily passed the brief interval between the ice cream man’s second and third loop. Can you throw ‘em over your shoulder like a continental soldier…Sofia twisted in her little swing, desperate to source the music already coded with context into her developing brain. “More, mommy, more!” she pleaded, beginning to fuss in earnest. I shifted her position again, distracting her with a wipe down and much needed nap.
Eight years, another baby, and approximately 73,467 passes by the ice cream truck later, the whole thing has lost a bit of its charm. The bloom is off the rose, as they say, and I find myself with each loud loop, increasingly over it.
“Mom, can we have a…”
“No.”
“Just this once? Ple..”
“NO!”
It’s like Chinese water torture, their begging. Drip, drip, drip, all hot summer long as the infernal ice cream truck passes yet again. Unfortunately, my children have learned that their patience will generally outlast my resolve.
Curiously enough, an ice cream man played a supporting role on the day I was born. My mother, sick of the creaky music waking her two young children from their naps, straddled a bicycle awkwardly, her huge pregnant belly stiff and uncompromising, and gave chase. Down our street she flew, determined to bend the ear of this neighborhood peddler with his roof-mounted megaphone and deep frosty cabinets full of treats. The truck stayed just far enough ahead of her that she was forced to pedal full out for several long blocks, and by the time she finally cornered him, her water broke. Long story short: my feelings about the whole ice cream truck thing are somewhat complicated.
One family I know handled the ice cream man conundrum with a brilliance I aspire to in my next life. The first time the ice cream truck came whistling up their street, they led their young child to the curb to point out the “music truck.” “See honey,” they smiled, “the music truck brings music to the children for free. Isn’t that great?” The toddler clapped her chubby hands, because if you don’t know any better yet, free music is almost as good as expensive ice cream. The ruse lasted for years, until the little girl learned to read. Then, with a sudden jolt of comprehension, she came to terms with her parent’s duplicity. Which – when compared side to side with the damage my children have suffered from my pre-emptive “NO’s!” lo, these many summers now — may not be such a bad deal after all.
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