Vanilla

After my mom remarried, Dad bought an ice cream stand. It was the kind of place that was open only during the summer months and attracted the local crowd. I’m not sure what prompted him to buy this business. Maybe it was a tit for tat move? You know like, she got a new husband? I’ll get a new side hustle. He named it the Dairy Oasis, so who knows. Maybe it was more safe harbor than life well-lived revenge. Dad still had his regular full-time job, so he had to hire a manager to run the Oasis during the day until he could take over after work. I was hired to work for him during my semester break from college. I learned a whole lot about ice cream that summer.

Before the divorce, Dad took my sisters and me to work with him on Saturday mornings. The office was closed, but Dad always had work to catch up on. He was the shipping manager of a rubber parts supply company. While he was working, my sisters and I ran around the empty offices pretending to answer the phone and spinning in the swiveling desk chairs. We photocopied weird objects: paper clips and pennies, lost buttons and even our faces, noses smooshed down on the glass. We gulped ice cold water from paper cone cups at the Minnehaha water cooler. We skipped around, yelling, “Minnehaha! Minnehaha!” sloshing water all over the linoleum and laughing so hard we had to stop and hold our sides. When we tired of the fancy offices up front, we made our way to the back room, where Dad’s desk sat amid stacks of cardboard shipping boxes. It was squeezed into a spot next to the giant industrial scale.

Dad promised if we behaved, he would take us to the Helen Hutchly’s Ice Cream Parlor down the street. No matter how much mischief we got into, we had ice cream every Saturday. Dad brought home an ice cream for my mom too. She didn’t care what flavor, as long as it wasn’t vanilla. She insisted vanilla wasn’t even a real flavor.

Dad loved his Dairy Oasis. On summer evenings, little league baseball teams gathered for a cone after their game. Dad asked if they had won or lost. The winners got cones on the house. Losers got free cones too. If it was your birthday—free cone! Anniversary—free cone! My mom and her new husband frequently stopped by and got their free cones as well. The Dairy Oasis obviously didn’t turn much of a profit. He struggled to keep it afloat, but had to close after three seasons. He had to find new homes for all the equipment he had bought: soft serve machines, freezers and blenders. There were endless bags of napkins, straws, and spoons. I still have boxes of waxed paper in my cupboard thirty years later.

Dad loved his Dairy Oasis. On summer evenings, little league baseball teams gathered for a cone after their game. Dad asked if they had won or lost. The winners got cones on the house. Losers got free cones too.

My mom left Dad for the piano teacher, a man who had managed to worm his way into our home, squeezing through the cracks until he split the house wide open. It’s unclear to me whether Dad never suspected the affair or if he somehow felt it was inevitable. For several Christmases after the divorce, Dad showed up at our house with a gold wrapped box for my mom. It was always the same, a bottle of Chanel No.5. When I asked him why he did that, he simply shrugged and said, “It’s her favorite.”

On those Saturdays in the ice cream parlor, we begged Dad for a double scoop of ice cream. It always felt impossible to choose just one flavor, so we asked for two. When Dad agreed to two, we begged for three. Dad always gave in. We picked flavors like bubble gum, Superman, extra dark fudge with brownie bits, and mint chocolate chip. In all those Saturdays, not once did we choose vanilla.

Once a friend asked my advice on what color to paint her living room. She brought out color swatches of every shade of cream and white you could imagine, finally landing on a slightly golden, deep cream color. “This one looks just like melted vanilla ice cream. There is something comforting about that,” she said. She was right, there was something deeply soothing about melted vanilla ice cream walls. It reminded me of the way vanilla ice cream tastes best atop a warm slice of apple pie, pooling on the bottom, waiting for you to tip the plate to your lips and slurp it up.

Sometimes people are described as vanilla.  If someone has lived their whole life in one town—vanilla. Attended an all-white parochial school—vanilla. Vacationed in the same spot year after year—vanilla. Vanilla is plain; vanilla is boring; vanilla is safe and never takes chances. Vanilla is never getting promoted to the fancy offices up front. Vanilla is nice. Vanilla is free cones for the winning team and the losing teams too. Vanilla is triple scoops on Saturdays. Vanilla is always trying to be Mr. Nice Guy. Vanilla is patient and unassuming. Vanilla is funny T-shirts and worn out jeans. Vanilla is forgiveness and Chanel No.5. Vanilla is unappreciated and taken for granted. Vanilla hangs back and lets the apple pie shine.

Vanilla is patient and unassuming. Vanilla is funny T-shirts and worn out jeans. Vanilla is forgiveness and Chanel No.5. Vanilla is unappreciated and taken for granted.

As for his stint with the Dairy Oasis, Dad may not have had much business sense, but he knew how to make people smile. The same customers came every night just to chat through the sliding glass window. If they couldn’t stop, they honked their horns and yelled, “Hey Bob!” as they drove by. After working with Dad for a summer, I discovered what people really like. They like their fries hot and crispy, their milkshakes extra thick, and to my surprise, vanilla was the most popular flavor.

There’s a small store in the shopping strip along the dock in Savannah called “Bob’s Your Uncle.” I stopped at that store every time I visited and brought back a Bob T-shirt for Dad. One year it was “Bob is Bob spelled backwards” and the next,  “Bob; the man, the myth, the legend.” The last had “SOB” in colorful letters across the front with smaller black lettering underneath that said, “Sweet Old Bob.”

Dad passed away quietly in the bed hospice care had set up for him in the middle of his dining room. There was no clutching of the chest or gasping for air. No final speech to give him the last word on anything. He simply closed his eyes and stopped being. One year later, I returned to the old Helen Hutchley’s Ice Cream Parlor and bought a triple scoop. I walked to the cemetery and sat on his grave, ice cream cone in hand. I closed my eyes and savored every lick of vanilla ice cream as it dripped down my hand, all melty and sweet.