Of Ice Cream and Men

It's no Steinbeckian tragedy, but a week ago I was struck by a tale of desires that are unable to be fulfilled, and the painful feelings of privation. And as a parent, it really connected me intimately with the humanity of my child, and I related to him more personally than perhaps I ever have. And tears flow almost inexplicably easily thinking about it.

Alongside his physical changes, which always astound me when I realize that I have a child that looks closer to a schoolboy than a toddler, Xavier is really maturing to an age where you can start seeing  his more complex emotions. Nowhere was this more on display than when we were at the playground recently, playing on the swings.

On the way to the park another day recently with our neighbors Jahaira & Wilder

I should give some context by noting that we bought our home in a very international area, and our neighborhood has a heavy Latino presence (primarily Salvadorean & Guatemalan). Our neighborhood also has a very heavy presence of ice cream trucks that drive around. Several of them. Every day. For much of the year. There's even a vendor on foot pushing his little cart, with a gently ringing bell, up and down the neighborhood streets. I actually really like this guy, because even though he seems out of place walking in a residential area with green lawns and red brick post-war homes rather than some bustling city street, the unexpected juxtaposition makes him all the more endearing. Plus, he's selling treats from a local company - Tito's - rather than the standard gamme of Good Humor offerings.

I haven't snapped a photo of our local guy on camera yet, but here's a Tito's colleague in DC, captured over at PoP. Our guy's cart looks the same, except it's in Spanish offering "Helado, Paletas"

So back to the story: We have lots of people selling ice cream and I'm always amazed that so many of them  can stay in business, plying the streets selling individual treats at $2-4 a piece in what is a low-to-moderate income area in general. But the Latino kids in particular do buy ice cream, and so it was this day at the park when a truck pulled up outside, and an unusual number of kids & their parents ran over to grab a treat.

The kids rocking out on the swings

Xavier, as he always does, excitedly called out "Ice Cream Man!", but usually this is about where it ends. I've wondered at times if he truly realized that the Ice Cream Man is actually selling ice cream, not just driving around playing music (including Christmas tunes in June...), because we never stop him to buy something. So Xavier just sees him as another interesting fixture in the fabric of our neighborhood, never pursuing anything further. But this time it was certainly clear that the other kids were getting treats. And they were coming back to sit and eat them right in front of us on the low wall at the edge of the playground, not ten feet away.

At this point Xavier was actually standing up in the adaptive swing (the handicap accessible one that is essentially a big, high-backed chair), his head turned, just staring. He wasn't interested in swinging. There was something else in his eyes: envy. The other kids were all getting ice cream, and he certainly loves it as much as anyone else. And he asked me if we could get some.

I said no.

I had my reasons, of course. All of which make perfect sense to an adult. It was nearly 6pm and we were heading home for dinner in a few minutes. And we try to limit the sweets that we give our children for their own health and to foster the development of good habits. This is not to say that we don't indulge them with some frequency. But when we do, we have ice cream two blocks away at home, where it cost us the same amount for a whole box from the store as it would for a single from the roving vendor. (And often we have available our homemade green smoothie pops, which they love and which are actually healthy - packed with kale and fruit, not refined sugar.)

But all that does very little to assuage a three-year-old who knows only that the other kids have ice cream, that he wants some, and that his dad is standing in the way of it. He asked a few times if we could get ice cream, but didn't protest too much or cause a scene. In an almost uncharacteristic way for him, he mostly just watched, head turned to the side, pointed toward the kids nearby, with unmistakable envy in his eyes.

And I watched too. I saw my little boy. And in him, I saw another one long ago: myself. Growing up in a family with seven children, it was well understood that we had to be frugal in order to get by. We were never hungry or deprived of the necessities of life, thankfully, but neither did we spend money when didn't have to. Whether it was just my natural personality or because I'd learned not to, as I child didn't ask for much. (Perhaps my mother disagrees, but this is certainly my recollection.)

Even when it should have appeared to a reasonable person to ask, I didn't. Case in point: When my well worn-out twin mattress had a broken spring poking up through it at one point, I never mentioned it or asked for a new one. I just flipped it over. When I grew to 6'4" and my feet hung off the end, same story. "Make it do or do without", right? In total, I probably slept on that thing for over a decade - far longer, I'd later learn, than an innerspring mattress is meant to last. When I went to college and my mom discovered the mattress' sorry state, she promptly threw it out and replaced it with a nice pillowtop queen bed. The first time I came home on break, I thought: "This is amazing! I would have slept so much better in high school (what little I slept) if I'd have had this!" which then immediately begged the question: "Why didn't I ask for a new bed in high school?"

I don't know. That's just not something you did in my family (at least in my view). None of my other siblings had a queen bed (granted, nor were any as tall...) and I'd never seen them complain or ask for something. So I didn't either.

In fact, I remember vividly the one time I did ask for something small. I must have been eight or nine years old and had been invited to a friend's birthday party at a roller skating rink. This was a treat that thankfully was on some other family's dime (we didn't throw parties like that for others) and I had a great time skating and eating pizza. Many of my friends also had money to play some of the arcade games, and I must have looked on with envy during breaks from skating, like any kid that age would. We didn't have video games at my house (something for which I'm actually grateful now) and I hadn't brought any pocket change, so I just watched but didn't get to play.

When mother came to pick me up (I was one of the last ones picked up, per usual), the rink was almost empty. Somehow though, I got the courage to ask her if I could have a quarter to play a game, and surprisingly enough, she obliged. I saw her open her pocketbook and pull out a quarter, which I excitedly put into nearby machine to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though I was the only one left playing, with all the other machines empty and quiet, for a glorious few moments I was finally like the other kids!

Then, no more than 30 seconds into my game, disaster struck. It was closing time and, perhaps oblivious to the excited kid over in the corner, some rink employee cut power to all the arcade machines. Mine went dark. I stood there in shock for a moment, in disbelief at what had happened. It's not like I'd been on it for hours and needed to be cut off. I'd barely gotten started! All the five stages of grief passed through my mind in a few moments: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. There was nothing I could do. It was over.

And I felt profoundly foolish. And wasteful. Here I'd asked for something - money - which I especially never did. For a frivolity, no less. And it was a waste. Looking back now it seems ridiculous to have been so concerned about the loss of a mere quarter, but to a child - to me - it seemed like so much more. Doubtless my mother, thrifty as she was, wasn't particularly worried about that 25 cents or else she wouldn't have given it to me. And as a parent she probably looked on with sadness at my disappointment and put her arm around me and ushered me out to the car offering some words of comfort that fell on deaf ears. To me, the 8 year-old, the experience just solidified in my mind everything I'd ever learned and perceived about not wasting money and I resolved never to ask for foolish things (or anything, it seems) again.

I have a terrible memory for past experience, and so it astounds me how vividly I recall this one moment, and
how easily and profusely the tears come recounting it. It made me sad as a child, and looking back at the poor child that is myself, it still makes me cry.

So now, as a 30-year-old, looking at my son's face on the playground, I don't just see the want in his eyes. I feel it. I know it. And I know a lot of other things that he doesn't that I've acquired over the past twenty-some-odd years. I do believe there's great value in learning to deal with frustration and self-denial. And I won't deny that to my children. But there is also time to enjoy yourself and indulge responsibly. My three-year-old doesn't really have the capacity of judgment yet to determine what is appropriate, so I have to stand in as proxy.

I do believe there's a time to get a strawberry shortcake bar or a nutty cone from the ice cream man. After all, he occasionally (albeit much more rarely) came down my streets as a kid and a few times we did stop him on those hot, sticky Alabama summer days. Looking back now, it's a pleasant memory of youth. A special treat. And I want my kids to have that too.

But I don't want it to be an everyday thing - which is an actual risk here. I want the times we do get something from the truck to be special for him, and not expected as a given. I don't think frequent indulgence is the wisest choice for financial or physical health, or self-discipline.

Yet, I have to admit that it seems a bit strange. To be honest, we're probably one of the better-off families financially in our neighborhood. And we're the ones saying "No" to little expenses like ice cream. Is that because we have better financial discipline? Perhaps. But then again, it might just be a difference in priorities. In Central American culture, perhaps getting ice cream in the street is just much more of a "thing". It's what you do and enjoy. If I look at myself, where do we spend money? Travel is important to us, and we'll spend thousands of dollars a year exploring new places or visiting family & friends. That's a whole lot more money than a trip to ice cream truck once or twice a week. Those are important to me and experiences that I feel are important for my kids though, so we prioritize our spending accordingly.

But what if things were different? Say that we were poorer and didn't have the luxury of paid vacation time. We would still want to do special things for our children that make them happy and think fondly of their childhood. And perhaps that would take the form of doling out a few spare dollars here and there for ice cream at the park instead. The children would recall the accumulation of many small things rather than a few big things, like going on the airplane or the train. (Not that we don't also do small things for our children too.) So even though I won't regularly support the hard-working ice cream man or pay for games at the mall like so many of my neighbors, I look with much more understanding of and don't judge their financial choices.

In the moment though, it hurts to see how much he feels envious of the other kids sitting a few feet away. Looking at the longing on his face had me fighting back tears. I've felt that hurt too, my son. Some day, hopefully Xavier will appreciate the nuance and reasoning behind my choices, and appreciate so much that he does have that the other kids don't. And I promise, some day, when it's not 6pm and right before dinner, we'll get a treat from the ice cream man too.

After all, as a friend who runs an orphanage in Africa stated as his motto:

"Every child deserves a childhood."

Good Morning, Sunshine!

I could write a post all about our family's not-infrequent routine of waking up and then playing around in bed together for a while, complete with hide-and-seek in the blankets, rolling around, etc. But today's post is actually about, well... the morning sunshine. (Sorry for the letdown.)

While I try to sleep in on the weekends (since I'm up in the five o'clock hour every weekday, and usually not in bed eight or even seven hours before that), I have some very strong circadian rhythms that don't allow me to violate that schedule much. So I was up at 6:30am today and the rest of the family, miraculously, has been stayed quietly slumbering, allowing me to enjoy a quiet and peaceful Sunday morning.

As I walked downstairs, I did something that has become somewhat of a new routine: pulling open the blinds on the windows around our lower level to illuminate that darkened space. But today that simple action  transported me back to nine years ago when I was living in France.

One of the first things I noticed that was different when I arrived there was a bit of architecture: shutters that actually worked. On old buildings there were, of course, the classic wooden shutters on hinges that you could pull shut. But more often there were plastic or metal roll-down shutters that you'd wind down at the end of the day. You can leave them slightly ajar to let a small amount of light stream in, but most frequently the slats were shut tight together, truly cutting off the outside world.

It would amaze me how almost without fail, every home at night would have the volets closed when it was time to go to bed or just be alone for the night. If as a missionary you approached a house and could see all the windows were closed, you'd know that you were probably better off moving on because either no one was home, or they would not be in the mood to receive anyone.

Not my apartment in France, but an example of the "volets roulants"

Of course, the flip side of this is that every morning when you wake up, you wind up the volets and let in the beautiful sunshine and feel as if the world is greeting you with a warm hug. I recall running along the cobble-stone streets in Coutances early in the morning, marveling at the peacefulness of the town as everyone was still cloistered inside, the only open windows being on the boulangerie next door, where the baker was already hard at work baking the day's breads and pastries. That sweet aroma is probably one of the few things that could entice me out of the apartment before 7 am and which made jogging a true pleasure. As I would turn back toward home at the end of my jog, I would start to see the occasional signs of life as the shades were rolled up and a few early birds would start stepping out into the streets.

I didn't know how novel the sun would seem just a short few years later when Cherry and I rented a basement apartment for the first 4 years of our marriage. Though it was a walk-out and most of the basement was above ground, our windows were only half-size and frequently shaded or obstructed completely with our window A/C units, meaning that sunshine was in short supply. We loved our location and had a great deal on rent, all told, but that was one thing we missed. It was such a revelation moving into our house in Takoma Park, which is a two-story brick home, square, about 25 feet long each side. Two windows adorn every side & level of the house, offering enough natural light that turning on the electric ones overhead is often unnecessary. We can also see the whole neighborhood around us, and be seen.

Given the need to control light levels and privacy, we've replaced or installed new, beautiful wide-slatted blinds in most of the windows around the house. The pull shut pretty tightly doing a good job of blocking light - though still not nearly as good as the roll-down shutters in France. Yet as I stepped downstairs this morning and pulled the cord to open them up, I felt for a brief moment as if I were back in Angers, having just hopped down from my bunk. I'd cross the room to the huge double windows that occupied most of the exterior wall of our city-center studio apartment. I grab the pole and wind up the aluminum shutters, revealing the street and world below. Light would stream across our desks, which sat side-by-side right below the windows, as we started our daily studies.

If there's anything I miss about being on the mission, (besides living in France, speaking French most of the day, walking down old streets, eating amazing bread, pastries & other cuisine, meeting lots of interesting people & being invited into their homes) it's just that time that I had to sit quietly and uninterrupted at my desk each morning and night, studying and writing. With work and especially a wife a children, there is rarely the quality - and certainly not the quantity - of time to sit quietly, write and reflect that I used to have. Even in college amidst an insane academic load, I would still take time to sit, reflect and write regularly. Not so much now. And I miss it.

But sometimes, in a rare peaceful moment when my body has said that it's time to get up despite the protestations of my mind, opening up those blinds reveals both the world outside, and reminds me to sit and open up the world inside of me as well.

Happy Birthday Clementine!

Yesterday we celebrated Clementine's First birthday! It was a great event with good food and great family and friends. Thanks to everyone who celebrated with us!

The most milestones one person can achieve in any given year has to be during the first year of life (I would think), so at the party we played a little quiz game to celebrate and share some fun Clementine facts. I wanted to extend the the game to all our friends and family who were celebrating with us virtually :-) ...

Please take the quiz and then email your answers to me at: cherry.hunsaker at gmail dot com

AND THERE WILL BE PRIZES so take this seriously. ;-)

Here are the questions:

1. What is Clem's birthday?

2. Where was she born?

3. Where did she go on her first car ride?

4. Which of the following did Clementine NOT do in her1st year?
a. Airplane trip
b. Boat trip
c. Helicopter ride
d. Snowmobile

5. How many states has Clementine been to? (Hint, technically DC is not a state, so it is not being counted. If you’d like to include it, write your congressmen and tell him or her that you want them to vote for DC statehood. : ) and then you can give the number of states plus write: “and The District”. For example: 2 states and The District.

5a. Bonus points for each correct state you can name.

6. How many countries has Clementine been to?

6a. Bonus points for each correct country you name.

7. What size was Clementine in the longest?

a. 3 month

b. 6 month

c. 9 month

d. newborn

8. What size did she grow out of the fastest?
a. 3 month

b. 6 month

c. 9 month

d. newborn

9. What are Clementine’s first words?
a. “mama”

b. “papa”

c. “delicious!”

d. She doesn’t have any words yet, only sounds.

10. When did Clementine get her first teeth (How old was she in months)?

11. Clementine is one year old. How many younger cousins does she have?
a. Zero

b. One

c. Two

d. Three
e. Six

12. What is Clementine’s favorite game?

13. Favorite container to drink from?
a. Bottle
b. Sippy cup
c. standard adult cup

14.What is Clementine’s favorite stuffed animal?

a. hippo

b. giraffe

c. pig

d. monkey

e. cow

f. egg

g. dog

h. lion

14a. Bonus if know the name.

15. Clementine took her first steps on her own at:
A. 9 months
B. 10 months
C. 11 months
D. 12 months

16. Her current favorite activity.



(Not sure why the font changed for the last two questions)

Thanks for playing! I will email out answers in a week or so. And remember, there will be prizes, so send your entries to cherry.hunsaker at gmail dot com.


Oh, and i will post picts as soon as I can. I had planned to with this post, but Spencer has the camera in Baltimore so I can't get the picts until later. But check back because I will post them.