“ I’m Saving Room for the Ice Cream ”

This photo is from the summer of 2018.  It needs a little context, though.   

I was at my parents' house.  It was the morning of a presbytery meeting that I was moderating, for which the co-moderator of the General Assembly was also going to be present.  And after that, I was leaving immediately to fly to Montreat for a youth conference.  

 Mom made sure I had breakfast.  A task that became a constant in both of our lives for a majority of them. 

I don't have a breakfast table picture from my childhood, but if I had one, it would be mostly similar (yes, that's a more than 40-year-old cake pan with the biscuits in it).  

In my childhood especially, I grew up with mom making breakfast every morning; and when I grew into not wanting to eat breakfast, mom made me milkshakes …for breakfast.  I tell you this because a friend of mine just admitted online to taking his kids to the grocery story at 9:30 at night to get ice cream—something his parents never did for him.  So, I’m bragging bit when I tell you that MY mom made me milkshakes with the ice cream always on hand in our freezer FOR BREAKFAST because she wanted me to eat!  [A famous comedian once bragged about feeding his kids chocolate cake for breakfast.  #HeHadNoIdea] 

Mom never pushed food on people.  Wait!  She was always insisting that we were having supper at 3:30 in the afternoon because that was enough time to get home from school, and dad could come home from work, and a window of time just large enough to allow mere minutes (or seconds!) in which to put food in our mouths—which constituted a full blown meal in mom’s terms—before the requisite leaving for meetings and activities and what-ever-else in creation we were doing.  Mom and dad somehow believed the meal table was important, and though it might not last long, and “nothing” ever really happened save the forcing of food down your gullet …mom could testify, should that somehow ever be necessary, that “we were at least together.” 

Proof of life apparently could mean being able to say you saw your family at supper, if all else failed. 

Because she had nourished us, at least, and we’ve always lived to tell about it, long into adulthood now, Mom still likes it most when in the course of the busiest of lives, she and my dad, can be at table with my sister and me, my children and hers, my spouse and hers, and we can all eat something ...together.  …In the same room.  …At the same time.  Even if it elapses in what would best be counted in seconds.  …Because somehow, at least we can all testify that we saw each other, and that constituted being together …and in any world, that’s important.  …And I can't remember the last time Mom was able to pull that off.  

In all honesty, in the busy-ness of life we all grew capable and used to fighting her off—not being willing participants because, well, someone always has something. 

So, with all the *stuff* we all bring or brought to that table, the last time, it damn sure wasn’t to last longer than the last fast sermon you heard preached on a Sunday morning when more needful things needed to happen.  I know it wouldn’t have taken any longer than a qualifying lap for the Indianapolis 500, either …and mom would have been happy …because apparently, it counted if only you were all together for it to happen. 

Which might say something as to why I can’t remember. 

The last time I think mom had a real meal was around Father's Day, this year—and we just passed Labor Day, now.  She's been plagued by all kinds of infections and ill-feeling-ness, and mostly an unrelenting nausea that's been present in some ways for years, now. Among other things, we think years of treating rheumatoid arthritis have taken toll from her kidneys, and her stuff is no longer a match for what keeps coming at her.  In most recent days, she can't or doesn't want to eat now ...and somehow, that's not like mom—who has always never quite been able to wait for the prayer to be said before she starts tasting what's on the table; I guess, from always being on the run to something, or her family was.  Bless her, she still brings that same spirit when the meal tray comes, but the act of eating seems to be also like an act of betrayal.  

 I don't know how much longer my mom's voice will remain part of this world. ...But last Friday was the first Friday of this fresh school year where everyone else in my nuclear family could barely get home and “suited up” for the next thing, before each had something to be gone fore.  A school football game (the first of the senior year),  and someone plays in the band, and someone worked in the concession stand, and friends.... So the door flung open, time after time with familiar refrains: "Are we gonna eat before, or after?" "I won't have time to get ready!" "Will there be supper, or are we just snacking?" and our school teacher with a commute barely even got here! 

I didn't know what I was doing at the time …urgently running to the grocery to get in supplies and throwing together a “meal” that would “fit.”  But, with effort and energy there was a meal—and fast-eaten, too.  It must have been important because I was bent to make it happen.  There were home-comings, and eating; there was a sending, and a returning.  They came.  We ate.  They went.  They came back.  And even at 10:30, or by then, after 11—we were polishing the leftovers and pushing down ice cream.  Because ice cream doesn’t have hours, you know, it simply just is! 

Actually, Mom might even be to the point of passing on ice cream now; though I can't imagine it.  But it won't be a betrayal, mom.  I promise.  

I don't know what the next hours or days hold.  I've been saying for several weeks that "Hope is being a rather unruly woman (those are my polite words)” just now.  Unruly and kicking hard like a stubborn mule at times, dragging me where I think I don't want to go.  The prayers and thoughts of so many have carried us upon what have been rough waters; and we have even dared to ask for calm seas.  Yet it's during that rough waters that Hope gains her value, because there and then, it is the one of God who is God, takes again the chaos of the moment and says enough of this.  I don't know what the miracle is to be, only that it is long-promised and not in doubt.  Hope rocks because life is a journey ...and we are not alone.  

I didn't eat breakfast today—sometimes old habits die hard—but it was an act of betrayal.  Or solidarity.  It's no way to go out into the world, I know.  Let’s just say I’m saving room for the ice cream.