What if one of your favorite memories from childhood didn't happen like you remember it did? I've been having a lot of flashbacks to snowstorms of my youth, driving around my new hometown that reminds me so much of my original one. Naturally the memory comes back to me of my grandmother making "snow ice cream" with me. I always assumed that this was a thing, like it was knowledge passed down from other Okie grandmothers to their grandchildren, or that my grandmother was following some old-fashioned recipe that she had tucked away, calling for a teaspoon of vanilla, a dollop of half and half, a bowlful of snow... I honestly don't remember what she put in it. I just remember the day it happened, and that I thought it was the most special thing ever.
Today I was staring out the kitchen window at the beautiful colors of the fence and tree contrasting with the curtain of snow, and I remembered that day. I have the steel mixing bowl that Grandma Eleanor used, and I pictured myself scooping up enough to try to recreate that experience (obviously selecting snow NOT from the back yard where the dogs live). For the first time, I thought about that day from an adult perspective. What if snow ice cream was never actually a thing? What if that snowstorm was just some day when we were visiting my grandparents, when my big brother and I were getting bored and restless, and Grandma just came up with a way to keep us from tearing out the walls? I would have been about seven or eight years old, and I really wouldn't have known better. Kids that age are pretty gullible when it comes to making sugary foods. I have been known to invent foods to keep kids from being bored. When my girls were tiny, I frequently made popcorn balls by boiling sugar to the hard candy stage and coloring it with food coloring, pouring it over popcorn, and telling the kids that it was "monster boogers." They thought it was great. Is that really what snow ice cream was? A way to entertain little me, and nothing more?
What if nothing I ever believed was true?
Love the toe picture. 😜
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