Ice Cream Sandwiches

Last week while I was working I took a minute to run inside a gas station. I had a craving for some ice cream, which happens more often than I'd like to admit now that I've quit smoking. Specifically I wanted one of those Snickers ice cream bars because they are amazing.

Well I got inside and browsed the ice cream thing, and to my dismay there were no Snickers ice cream bars. It was a pretty basic selection, so I went with your basic ice cream sandwich. Didn't think twice about it. Paid my tab, got back in the car, and swung around to the far end of the parking lot so I could watch to make sure the clerk closed up safely.

I peeled the paper off my ice cream sandwich and took a bite. It was chocolaty and creamy and delicious, and like a punch to the head a memory sprang up from the abyss.

My grandmother on my mother's side had a big, beautiful house back in Syracuse. It was the perfect house for grandparents, with a big, dirty garage for us to play in with Papa, a set of red carpeted stairs we could slide, run, and fall down, and a big kitchen where Gramma made magic happen. My Gramma could cook like it was nobody's business. How many hot, delicious meals emerged from that kitchen I'll never know, but I do remember that there was more to Gramma's kitchen than just pasta. In the corner was Gramma's seemingly centuries old refrigerator. The freezer made up the bottom of the unit, so it was at the perfect level for small children. Whenever my brother, sister, cousins, and I would find ourselves turned loose at Gramma's house we would always take a moment to run into the kitchen, tug open the freezer, and help ourselves to the box of ice cream sandwiches. Gramma never ran out of ice cream sandwiches. If we spent all day over there, leaving only one left in the box, and went back over again the next day there was another box ready and waiting. Gramma always had ice cream sandwiches. I swear she must have made trips to the grocery store just to buy them.

Sitting there in my patrol car I remembered what it was like to spend hours running around, playing, just being a kid, and how great that ice cream sandwich was when it was time for a break. Isn't it funny how a certain taste or smell can bring you back to a moment or time that was dear to you? Gramma will always have ice cream sandwiches in my mind.