At the end of a long Mother’s Day, Grady said to me, “Sorry you had to work so hard.” My reply was honest and simple: “I enjoyed it.”
Why? Because I am not good at waiting; I would rather be doing something. In addition, having had a lot of Al-Anon training, I know not to set my expectations too high, lest I be disappointed. Mother’s Day is ripe with disappointing possibilities. It’s an easy day to slip into a “woe is me” moment.
Preparation
This Mother’s Day, at my house, we had a late afternoon ice cream social, complete with homemade strawberry ice cream. The day before, in preparation, Grady and I drove out to a farm in Cabot, Arkansas to buy a fresh bushel of strawberries that would later be churned up into a creamy, cold desert.
Breaking out the old ice cream maker seemed like a wholesome, Norman Rockwell kind of thing to do. But the reality was a lot of prep, steps and fussing around to make the homemade ice cream. For instance, if you want your dessert to be rich, you must first make an egg custard base on top of the stove that you later chill for about an hour or so. Then, your sugar-soaked strawberries (prepped the night before) are stirred into the custard, and it is all poured into your already chilled ice cream canister.
Finally, the FUN
Now, it was time to set up shop outside with your leaky ice cream making bucket. Thankfully mine is electric, though I do remember the old crank method and having to take turns at the task. For the next 40 minutes, I alternated putting crushed ice and rock salt into the bucket, around the electrically churning canister. Gratifyingly, I watched through the clear lid as the liquid thickened, becoming ice cream. Finally, I reached Norman Rockwell Nirvana.
I forwent the soft serve option and put my light pink creation into the ice box to harden.
Later, after a heated and gleeful game of croquet (the only sport where the older people are better than the younger), we relaxed with a scoop of homemade strawberry ice cream, with homemade whip cream on top, and a cookie on the side.
Now that is an enjoyable Mother’s Day.
Learn the origin of Mother’s Day, originally written Mothers’ Day (note the apostrophe), first founded after the Civil War. It was an anti-war, women’s rights day with the intention of allowing women to vote, thus ending war, forever … or so they thought.
