Saturday, September 3, 2011

Tough cookie

Tonight we decided to take the girls for ice cream. We had dinner at my parents and none of us had anything to do so we thought why not. We headed to the only place in town that serves "Abby Friendly" (soy) ice cream. She was so excited. While we were waiting to leave she was dancing and singing "I'm gonna have salted caramel" over and over. You see the only flavor they have (for my four year old) isn't chocolate or vanilla or strawberry... it's salted caramel. Thankfully she is a flexible child much of the time so she willfully eats it. (And trust me, as someone who likes soy based foods, it's not that good.)

We got to the counter and started ordering. When we got to Abby the girl working their told us that they had lost their soy ice cream in the hurricane power outages. My heart sank. It was stupid for my heart to sink over something so meaningless but for her having an ice cream cone like every other kid is a HUGE deal. I wanted to cry. Thankfully she didn't. She gave me a disappointed glance when I had to be the bad guy to tell her there was no ice cream for her. No water ice. Nothing. Thankfully they had a table with some miscellaneous things and she chose a ring pop and a bag of pretzels.

In that moment I marveled in her flexibility. I thought about how having such a rare and weird brain disorder has taught her to be patient and flexible and resilient. Her food allergies have taught her that food is not the end all and be all in this world. She never ceases to amaze me.

Unfortunately the story ends with her crying in the car on the way home when her pop and pretzels were eaten and she realized her consolation wasn't as good as it seemed. Thankfully playing with her iPod put her in a better mood. :D

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