I have never been a lover of ice cream.  Odd, as I traditionally am a lover of anything fatty and bad for me.  But I have never been the typical girl who drowns her sorrows in buckets of Ben & Jerry’s after a breakup, possibly because I never sat around in my underwear with friends.  Maybe that is something I should work on in the coming months.

As I looked at this writing prompt I was struck, I have nothing to say about ice cream; even though it is where my reptiles live. 

I told myself, Sadie, it can’t be that hard to write about ice cream.  Every kid loves it.  Your children are obsessed with making milkshakes daily and leaving the proof dripping across your counters.  You get texts from the children hibernating in the basement, “We are out of ice cream.  Thought you might want to go to the store.  You can put your bra back on as easy as you took it off.”

I thought about how refreshing ice cream might be on a hot day; melting, running down your arm, sticky…. and the little kids with the dirty faces and sticky fingers wanting to touch your white shirt and… overwhelming panic stopped me from finishing that thought.

I was lead back to a hot July day almost 9 years ago.  I was 8 months pregnant with my last third child, Pete.  I thought about how good ice cream may have felt that day except I had developed gestational diabetes.  I had to learn to give myself insulin injections and took up to 7 a day.  Needless to say, it was a miserable pregnancy.  I was hot.  I had to work out every day.  I had to pay attention to what I ate.  I had to be good.

I am almost never good.  But for nine months, I was good every day.  I haven’t been good again since.

I had mowed the lawn in 101 degree heat and started getting woozy.  I found a shady spot under the tree to sit and rest.  The College Boy and D&D Nerd came out to sit next to me sucking on their Otter Pops.  At that moment I was jealous of the Otter Pops, but I just wanted to press them up against my body, not ingest them.

 My Loving Husband Raynard came out to check on me and found me not looking good at all. “What can I do for you?”

“Could you fill up a bucket with water, for me to soak my feet in?”

Raynard brought over a five gallon bucket with cool water out of the hose.  I picked up my swollen feet and dipped them in the bucket.  The relief was glorious, almost orgasmic.  The water heated from my skin quickly, so Raynard brought me ice for the bucket.

Now the children who no longer had Otter Pops looked jealously at me and I could see the mutiny that was about to be afoot on MY FEET.

College Boy stuck his toe in my water.  “That’s cold.  It feels good.” And then he stuck his whole foot in.

Followed shortly by the D&D Nerd, he didn’t ask he went straight in, both feet.

I took my feet out quickly so as not to be taken out by the small children that I bred, in a moment of weakness.

College Boy stuck his other foot in as Raynard looked on.  Raynard lifted the two children out of the bucket and looked at me

–then stuck his own feet in the bucket.