A Superior Day

          Yesterday, we had a Snider family gathering. The day produced the first break from the oppressive heat we've had the last couple of weeks, with a plunge in temperatures to a nearly chilly 82 degrees, the kind of late summer day when I used to love to go to my boys' fall ball baseball games, where the idea was simply to play ball. It was there I had my first introduction to Jimmy Kidwell and his sidekick, Jason, who split their kneehighs and thus had matching socks, and who were the Laurel and Hardy of the team. When Jason's slide brought him up short of second and he scrambled on his belly the rest of the way like an elephant seal who'd missed the wave out, our reaction was laughter, not a desperate intake of breath to see if he'd beat the ball. During fall ball, I dozed in my low-slung lawn chair, feeling utterly one with the sun, earth, and humanity. 

          And I got close to that yesterday, too. Doug's brother, Steve, and his fiancee, Dee, had asked us to join them at Aunt Louise's in Hanford. Aunt Louise is Doug and Steve's closest living relative from prior generations, though they share no blood. The Snider family makes up in complexity what it lacks in numbers, and we spent part of lunch listening attentively as Doug explained some of the ties to us, again, he being the only one who has mastered the relationships. Doug and Steve's mother, Jannelle, moved in with her aunt when she was about ten, after her own mother died. Her brother, Jack, was raised by another family member. Their dad remarried and moved to Canada, and his son from that marriage would marry a lady named Colleen (hold on: this is important). 

           Aunt Louise is from Hot Springs, Georgia, and it was there she met Doug and Steve's Uncle Jack, and not too long after, married and moved to the West Coast with him. You might say she was (and is) smitten. I've also adopted Aunt Louise, as my resident mom. Like my own mom, she is spunky, bright, adventurous, lively, kind, and independent. When Louise and Mom met last Thanksgiving, they soon discovered, among other things, that their husbands had served with the Army in some of the same locations during World War II, and who knows, perhaps they'd been acquainted. Uncle Jack and my dad, Harp, both passed away in 2002. 

           Colleen and Louise are traveling to Europe together next spring, where Louise's daughter, Joan, and her family have lived and worked for years. Doug met Colleen not too long ago, when he discovered she lives in a small town near Bellingham, where he owns a home. Colleen is Doug's half-aunt-in-law and Louise's half-cousin-in-law. It's fun to unweave the threads of relationship, a little more complicated than second-cousins-twice-removed. What's more important, though, are the bonds. 

           When I first met Dee (Steve's fiancee, in case you've forgotten) I was alarmed by my reaction, and figured I'd better admit to it: I had an immediate and near visceral dislike of her. In my defense, I think maybe I felt protective of Steve, who's former wife announced to him over dinner, as they celebrated her (finally, after ten years in this country) getting her U.S. citizenship, that she wanted him to move out. That didn't make us any fonder of Dolores. I suspect, however, that what really lay at the basis of my reaction to Dee was that she was taking over my spot on the back of Steve's motorcycle. This is in no way petty: not everyone gets to ride with a national motorcycle racing champion who once had ladies from Fresno to Juneau swooning over him and his two motorcycle-riding Italian compatriots, until his limited Italian vocabulary ran out and his cover was blown. 

           It was and is clear that Dee and Steve care for each other, wounds and warts and all, just like the rest of us who muddle along wanting to care and be cared for, and that I'd better decide to like her, which, I must peevishly confess, isn't so hard at all. So, there we were at Appleby's, utterly freezing, as apparently their AC was still set for 106-degree weather, and enjoying the variety of conversations that rolled around the table, sometimes three or four at a time, and sometimes one. Doug easily won the brotherly competition by whipping his VISA out of his wallet and giving it to the waitress before we ordered--she thanked Doug and told us to take our time with lunch, as she was going out to buy the new lawnmower she needed. 

           After a leisurely lunch, Steve suggested dessert at Superior Dairy. I have known about Superior for years, but this was to be my first visit, and I was regretting having succumbed to taste-testing, the night before, the rocky road ice cream I'd bought for Doug. My own adopted daughter, Lori, and her friends and their kids have jumped on Amtrak in Fresno for an outing to Hanford at Superior and Courthouse Park, and as we drove around to the backside of the park, I looked for the fountain where Lori had taken the picture of Josie and Becca, butts up. It looked much smaller than I'd imagined and wasn't center stage, but I quickly put aside my disappointment. 

           I was horrified--or perhaps scared--as we entered Superior. The amounts of ice cream and size of sundaes were ludicrous, purely American, a shining example of why we are so obese. No way was I going to blow my weight-loss-producing new lifestyle. I ordered a single (not scoop, just single: this is important, too), which is expensive. But this is supposed to be amazing ice cream. My single arrived: five generous scoops of an odd shade of brownish-gray rocky road in a glass bowl. Aunt Louise's double arrived: the loveliest pink strawberry mounded on top of a sturdy base of rocky road. Others had eight-inch high sundaes. I disdainfully pronounced the serving sizes ludicrous. 

           Not long after, I'd worked my way through a good third of the most amazing tasting ice cream I truly have ever eaten--Baskin Robbins, Ben and Jerry's, Hagen Daz are no contest--and commented that this ice cream produces no ice cream headache. Steve's twenty-year-old son Gregory, who was sharing a banana split with his cousin, Katie, Doug's twenty-four-year-old daughter, said he'd taken so much ibuprofen that morning that he wouldn't know. Doug said his headache wouldn't get in the way, and Katie was smiling beatifically, despite hers. 

           Shortly, Doug had finished his hot fudge sundae with extra hot fudge and was very content, Aunt Louise had nearly worked her way through the strawberry, Katie had left Gregory to finish off their split, and Steve and Dee had given up and gone out for a walk. I had literally put down my spoon maybe once. I could not stop eating. I don't know what someone could have told me to make me put down my spoon. I ate the entire five-scoop single and probably would have licked the bowl if I'd been alone at home. I didn't feel grossly stuffed, but rather like I'd experienced Oz or Willie Wonka's chocolate factory or Mrs. Corry's magic sweet shop in Mary Poppins or just plain old Nirvana or Valhalla. 

           Time passing as it does, I haven't been to a fall ball game in eight years or so. I'll never get to eat at the Imperial Palace, the other renowned Hanford spot, as it went out of business before I made a point of it. Doug, Steve, Dee, and I have all been married and divorced at least once, and so our kids, too, have less than simple family trees. But on a perfect fall day, we froze and conversed and ate the world's best ice cream, and a passerby took pictures with the camera Dee had brought to record the gathering. We hugged and kissed all around and looked in each others' hearts and felt a little closer and a little more blessed than we already were and smiled as we drove home to our valley towns, commenting softly, like the perfect soft fall sun, about what a superior time it had been.