One Cool Idea

We have an abundance of ways to remember someone.

In sports, teams often wear a black ribbon around a jersey sleeve, or the individual’s uniform number or initials on a helmet, or sometimes the club retires the number of the deceased. In government, there are buildings, planes or ships named after individuals. The general public often names parks and civic awards in honor of outstanding community benefactors. (Don’t get me started on the memorial plaque-ing of church items!) In families, trees and gardens are planted and babies are sometimes named for past family members - we didn’t with Amanda and Luke, but we did happen to use "family" names. (Shhh. Don’t tell those that think we did!)

While we have not done anything specific to "memorialize" Cindy, the kids and I did do one thing yesterday morning in honor of Cindy.

Summertime was Cindy’s favorite time of the year. Summer meant sun, fun, boating, swimming, yard sales, and sno-cones. Several years back, Cindy bought an electric sno-cone maker from K’s. It was one of the coolest things she ever purchased, pardon the pun. We always had sno-cones at our summer party, at 4th of July, and Amanda sold them at our most recent yard sale. (She made $44 hounding shoppers until they bought one!) Cindy was the "Sno-Cone Girl". She had purchased nearly as many flavors as any local sno-cone hut you see on the road. The amount of money spent on flavored sugar water was quite a small fortune.

So yesterday while I dealt with the second day of being snowed-in at my house, alone with the kids, I had an idea. We could eat the snow. Amanda is always wanting to run outside during the lightest of flurries to catch flakes with her tongue, but this would be way cooler. I was right. I got a small cup of snow from off our deck, gave both kids a spoon, and told them to go to town. They did. Luke went over to the cabinet and pulled out a plastic cake plate topper. He turned it upside down and poured the snow into it. And then promptly asked for more snow to fill up the gallon sized cake lid. I saw that it was a better vessel to dig snow out of with a spoon, so I went along with his request and got 3 more scoops of snow and added it to his snow container. Then I had an idea which Cindy would have been proud of.

I remembered the sno-cone juice. I retrieved one bottle of flavoring (Cotton Candy) out of the garage and one more cup of snow from the deck. Amanda was starting to REALLY get excited. Hey, lets add straight sugar to your diet while you are stuck in the house with me! What a great idea, Dad! I poured the juice over the snow and it evolved into a paste. After it melted a little all was good and the kids dug into the "real" snow-cone with great joy. I told the kids that this sno-cone was in honor of mommy. Cindy would have gotten joy from seeing her kids (and me) on the floor, straw-spoons in hand eating that pink, pasty mess until it was all gone.

I miss Cindy tremendously. I was a better man with her. I am working hard on being a better Martha Stewart without her.