Ice Cream Sundaes

by Susan Cameron

My rental car gingerly feels its way around the dirt road potholes
as it stutters up the hill toward the exhausted farmhouse.
For a hundred and fifty years, the house had endured
sunbaked days and frozen nights, drought and deluge,
freeze and thaw, and the indifference or poverty of its owners.

Creaky-floored, rattle-piped, drafty-windowed,
it sags under the insubstantial weight of its latest renters --
my old friend, her two kids, her new husband, his two kids:
skinny refugees from urban warfare seeking shelter
in rural Noplace, Michigan.

Her son and daughter slam-bang the screen door open
and joyfully whoop their way into my arms.
Not once do I exclaim, "My God, you're so big, and
I used to change your diapers!" -- too SoCal Cool for that now.
Then comes a smaller boy and a younger girl, trailing behind,
cautious and quiet as field mice; the new step-siblings.
And then, there's my friend!  Her husband, too,
on his way to work, driving truck, local truck, for minimum wage.
My friend sometimes babysits for a few women who work in town
at the Walmart, but not today...

Today, I take everybody to town for ice cream sundaes!  Hooray!
At the ice cream parlor, the kids are a small orchestra playing
Eine Kleine Gigglemusik.  We're all so happy -- it's a party,
a two-hour party, and the waitress is getting a big tip today.
But no party lasts forever.  Night is coming, and it's going to get cold.

My friend and I are back in her kitchen, and she seems to be
struggling with words half-stuck in her throat.
I hear noises -- the children are dragging mattresses to the living room,
around the fireplace, since that's where the heat will be.
If she asks me to dinner, there won't be enough food for everyone.

I kiss everyone goodbye and drive away through the cricket-singing twilight,
glancing through the rear-view mirror at the rosy sunset glow
lighting up the peeling paint of the old farmhouse porch,
amazed at the lovely patina glazing rural America's
picturesque poverty.


Susan Cameron, copyright 2013