What’s for supper? Ten to feed. We took bets on the next meal. Tuna noodle casserole. Hamburger with corn, cheese and tortilla chips in the crock pot. Open-faced sandwiches, more pickles and radishes than meat.
Sometimes at wit’s end, my mother would plop a scoop of ice cream into a glass of coke, which bobbed while the cream sizzled, squirting a sweet bit on my face as I watched. She drizzled Hershey’s syrup on top, dark as molasses. A quick stir, and heaven was at hand.
That treat could keep you a long time – until hell freezes over, my Dad would say. No matter how much snow the winter carried in pregnant clouds, the lake near us never froze, except at the edges, waves lapping the ice whenever the wind tried for a homerun.
With a chocolate soda, you could forget what hungry was. You could slurp the last few swallows of that potion through a straw, and the gurgling would convince even my Scottish grandmother that sleep would come easy. Nothing more one needed to do. Just wash the glass and spoon, set them on a towel to dry. My mother’s magic, quelling all bets.
Carol Barrett directs the Creative Writing Certificate Program for doctoral students at Union Institute & University. She has published two volumes of poetry and one of creative nonfiction. Her work appears in many literary magazines and in over fifty anthologies. A former NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol has lived in nine states and in England.
