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."