Princess Pistachio

One of the things that has helped our household keep its collective wits during this extended "stay-cation" has been our regular interaction with Suzanne, Ryan, and their three littles.  Since Maggie arrived slightly more than three years ago, Nana has spent a significant portion of several days a week with Suzanne, spending time with her and with our grandchildren, while also helping Suz out so she can take care of her clients in her speech language therapy practice.  

Rylan arrived less than a month before Governor Murphy's Executive Order directing us to, essentially, shelter in place.  Our household and Suzanne/Ryan's household have followed the tenets of that order faithfully.  Neither Suzanne nor Ryan makes an unnecessary trip anywhere. Ryan has worked from home since mid-March and Suzanne tends to her clients through Zoom and other remote applications.  Margaret similarly became a non-traveler upon implementation of the Executive Order.  With certain, one-off, limited exceptions, Suzanne and Ryan travel have traveled nowhere but to our house, which they do on Sunday evenings for dinner.  Margaret has not traveled anywhere.  Neither has Joe.  The only traveling I do is to my office, one or two times a week in the wee small hours of the morning when the joint is practically deserted to pick up work, to the grocery store (Pop Pop shops for both households), and to the gas station.   

All of my grandchildren are a B-12 shot.  Time spent in their company improves my mood, lifts my spirits, and makes me - for a little while anyway - less of an asshole.  Of all the things I love about them, my most favorite thing that my grandchildren do is their never-ending ability to amaze me.  They are an extraordinary little group, blessed with big brains and even bigger hearts. 

A rite of Sunday dinner is Maggie and Cal helping Pop Pop get dessert on the table.  Margaret and I typically have several types of ice cream in our freezer (although truthfully neither of us eats much of it at all), which I faithfully take out and put on the table as part of the dessert menu.  A few months ago, Maggie's favorite ice cream flavor was strawberry.  More often than not, she would ask for it (by color "pink" as opposed to by name).  Then, right around my birthday in early February, she noticed that Joe Joe's ice cream of choice is pistachio almond.  One Sunday night she asked him if she could try a little bit of his pistachio almond.  Voila! A new generation of pistachio almond fan was born. 

Fast forward to this past Sunday night.  Maggie and Pop Pop were at the freezer, taking out the various types of ice cream that were going to be offered as dessert options.  As she stood to the left of where I was crouched down, she saw the container of strawberry ice cream.  In the sweetest, almost conspiratorial tone of voice I have ever heard, she leaned in close to me and, while patting me on the arm, said, "Pop Pop, I'm not going to eat the pink ice cream any more.  You don't have to take it out."  

I smiled immediately and then simply had to laugh. Her sincerity was unmistakable. So was her formulation of the thought that since she had been the only one she had seen eating "pink" ice cream, and she had now abandoned "pink" for the food-coloring-enhanced green treat that is Turkey Hill Pistachio Almond, I no longer needed to expend the time or energy carrying "pink" all the way across the kitchen.  Her logic was unassailable. 

I kissed her on the head and told her that we would leave "pink" in the freezer.  Once she sat back down at the table, she watched excitedly as Suzanne put a small scoop of pistachio almond in a bowl for her and then squirted some Reddi-Whip into a second bowl for dipping.  With her dessert prepared, she moved down to her seat at the opposite end of the table from me - and right off her great-grandfather's right shoulder - where the two of them each enjoyed their pistachio almond ice cream, thick as thieves.  

I just looked at them, smiling.  Three days later, thinking about her, I still am. 

-AK