Some of you know how very much I enjoy photography as a hobby. A select few also know how I sometimes merge my love of photography with a somewhat edgy sense of humor, adding captions and the like. One big regret I have concerning my photography is that I never captured a picture of Mom eating a rainbow ice cream cone.
It isn't unusual when our family gathers around the holiday dinner tables to hear someone call out my mom's name, "Theresaaaaa!" and point at me. I know as soon as I hear Mom's name invoked that I undoubtedly have spilled something, usually right down the front of myself. Yes, Mom often wore her meal. And, the truth be told...so do I.
My daughter was asking my son the other day if he remembered going with Grandma to Bozo's for rainbow ice cream cones. Bozo's was located along 111th street between Cicero and Ridgeland in Chicago's south suburbs, and they served up huge rainbow ice cream cones - 7 or 8 different flavors layered atop a large cone. The challenge was not only in finishing this ice cream cone but doing so on a warm summer evening before it melted all over you.
While most of us fretted and were constantly trying to work around the drips at the bottom of the ice cream mountain, keeping them from running down the cone and eventually over our hand, down an arm and then all over us, Mom started at the top and just worked her way down seemingly oblivious to the mess. The kids recalled how Grandma usually ended up wearing all eight colors down her arms, across the front of her top and on her white pants. She frequently wore white pants when we went out for rainbow cones.
The point of this story is that Mom kept her eye on the prize - ENJOYING that rainbow cone. She never wasted time worrying about the melted ice cream dripping all over her - Mom was there to enjoy ice cream!
Like I said, I regret never having captured a picture of Mom eating one of those mammoth cones, but I will forever have that image in my mind - of Mom in rainbow colors, a huge rainbow cone in her hand, and a great wide wonderful smile.
|