Ice Cream for the World: Looking at Myself from Outside Myself, I Realized I Simply Wasn't Sane

I have been saying Monday didn't go as expected.  That is so true.  I pulled into our lane and our two big dogs, Oreo and Chewy greeted me, running in front of the car past the old farm sheds and around the bend, where Chewy saw four or five deer standing along the fence line, and took off after them, sending them bounding over the barbed wire barricade.  He could have easily followed them, but turned back to the car.  This was ritual, day after day.

So too was Oreo's head instantly appearing inside the car as I opened the door.  He could never wait for me to get outside to say "Hi."  It irritated me a bit, but his eyes showed so much joy as his chin rested on my knee, all I could do is pat him on the head, "Hello Oreo."  Then I'd say, "How are the chickens?"  He'd instantly be gone, having zipped over to the chicken cage to let me know he was doing his job.  He spent the majority of the day laying by the wooden breezeway that went from the coop to the run.  He was utterly fascinated with how the chickens could get through it.  Originally, I thought he was out to kill the chickens.  But one day I let them out, and he had no interest in hurting them.  He simply admired how they could go through that little suspended hallway from their dark, interior world, and pop out into daylight.  It was all very scientific to him; he'd sit for hours in amazed observation.  He also dug in the dirt for scientific purposes.  I had large spots of bare dusty earth all over the yard which Oreo created for the sole purpose of watching the dust float away.  They were his labs.  Scratch a little; watch it all be picked up and float away.  My brother joked that Oreo would start the next dust bowl.  Oreo was awed by movement.  Somehow or another, he observed, those chickens just moved through that tunnel.  He didn't want to hurt them.  He wanted to study them, and so over time, it became his self-appointed job to watch over the chickens.  Whenever he was annoying me all I had to say was "How are the chickens?" and off he'd run to see if they were coming through that worm hole again.  It was very cute.

Chewy followed me part way to the door, but torn between allegiances, bound off after Oreo.  I was dog free--at least until I opened the utility room door.

As I opened the bright yellow door, I was greeted by our two pugs, Buddha and Camilla, yapping, spinning in circles and scratching at my leg.  I walked through the utility room, kicking a mostly-empty dog-food bag to the side, the two dogs running before me, jumping up, yapping some more.  Before I reached the kitchen, Marci asked, “Dear, did you give your notice?  Also, don’t you know where the pot lids go?”

The second part was to be expected.  I am often greeted with a showering of bullet-questions—indictments followed by question marks, which are not launched seeking answers but repentance.  But, that first question seemed to require a response.  What response I was supposed to give, I wasn’t sure.  I had purposefully not brought up the ice cream truck on Sunday because trying to discuss it Saturday quickly turned sour.  So, maybe it wasn’t a question after all.  Maybe it was sarcasm.  Maybe what she was really saying was have you dropped that hair brain idea of the ice cream truck yet?  That would make sense.  She would not want a response to that.  For her, the answer would be obvious.  Drop it.

I decided the safest thing to do was answer the second.  “They go in the bottom cupboard between the stove and oven”.

“Very good. So why were they under the stove again?”

I didn’t know how to answer that.  What I’d learned over the years is that I only had to get through these first five minutes.  Marci is a wonderful person and everyone loves her.  She isn’t mean, she isn’t a nag.  It seemed to have something to do with crossing borders from the outside world and into the interior spaces of our home.  I’m not sure where it came from.  It occurred whenever someone was coming home, like I was now; she’d wait inside fully armed with a great arsenal of questions.  It also occurred if she was the one coming home.  She’d enter like a S.W.A.T. team and gun you down before you could get out How was your day?:   

“Why is that NyQuil cup on the bottle?  Don’t you know it gets the bottle sticky?  And why did you change the tablecloth?  Don’t you know I hate orange?”

Sometimes I was stupid enough to respond, which would unravel what would have been a great evening of cooking and watching TV together.  We always had a show we were watching together.  Recently, it had been Stranger Things.  Sometimes Marci made dinner; sometimes I did.  If I could just stay quiet during those first five minutes of transition, everything was grand.  Very seldom did we fight over anything big, especially since I’d found my way back to the Church.  I was simply easier to live with than I used to be.  She might be difficult to live with for 5 minutes each day, but for much of our marriage, I could be terrible for weeks on end.  In short, for most of our marriage, I got the better end of the stick.  Still, those five minutes each day were hard, very hard.

“How was your day?” I asked, hoping we'd moved beyond the questions.

“Okay.  Did you give your notice?”

“Was I supposed to?”

“Yes.  Isn’t that obvious?  We can’t very well pick up everything, buy an ice cream truck and become vagabonds while simultaneously staying here.”

“But Saturday, you—”

“You aren't wavering, are you?”

“I didn’t even know a decision was made.  Saturday, you—"

Like I was saying, Monday did not go as expected.  Somehow between Saturday night and Monday afternoon, Marci had switched sides on this battle front.  What's strange is that I instinctively stepped over the line in opposition to her; therefore, in effect, countering all my own original arguments as if I had become her and she had become me.  Seeing things from her point of view, I realized what an idiot I was.  No wonder she had to let off a little steam each day as our worlds collided by firing those damn questions.  The pressure was immense.  Who gives up two secure jobs and a beautiful home to drive around the country giving ice cream away--for free?  Looking at myself from outside myself, I realized I simply wasn't sane.  What's more, this wasn't the first time this had happened.  If we actually went through with it, it would be the second time, and that was her loaded cannon.

"What's the big deal?  We moved here without a plan."

"That's different."

"How?  This is something you really want to do, so let's do it."

I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't.  From where she formally stood--it all looked so incredibly foolish.  All I could see was our lives imploding and us becoming homeless.  I wondered what conversation she had had with herself to get herself to walk off that cliff--out there in the deep, black void of the unknown.  But there she stood, calm as Buddha himself, perfectly at ease with an uncertain future.  How could I back out now?

I had no idea, but I'd sure in the hell try.  Our future depended on it.