A scoop of Moosetracks
I was thinking the other day about the funny ways that grief can come to us. Like in a scoop of ice cream.
A Scoop of Moosetracks
by Peggy Haymes
A scoop of ice cream at a basketball game.
Not exactly the grief ritual you’d recognize. And yet, here it is.
My father loved Wake Forest University. He moved to Winston-Salem about the same time the college did, and adopted the sports teams as his own, seeing as how the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (his alma mater) never fielded much of a football team.
As a child I remember going to basketball games with our family in the old coliseum, an overgrown metal quonset hut of a building known for the haze of cigarette smoke that hovered over the court. I remember getting a black and gold “I love CD” button as part of a campaign supporting Charlie Davis for ACC Player of the Year (which indeed he was.)
I remember Rodney Rogers’ earth shattering 360 degree dunk against the hated Tar Heels. How the crowd rose as one as this force of nature sped down the court and soared into the air, how we gasped and cheered all at the same time as he didn't just dunk the ball but spun all the way around first, a picture of grace and violence.
When I finished school and got my first job I was only about 40 minutes away, so we still went to basketball games together, my mom and my dad and I.
After my mom’s death my father’s health continued a decline begun some years before. Now going to the games meant getting there early to snag a handicapped space and my dad carrying a portable oxygen tank over his shoulder.
Then, in his last season on this earth, he wasn’t strong enough to walk so I pushed his wheelchair. We had to leave the first game early, finding that the portable tank no longer provided all the air he needed to get through a game. Portable condensers weren’t a thing yet, so for subsequent games I pushed him in his wheelchair while pulling a large oxygen tank behind us.
When we left games, the crowd parted like the Red Sea to let us through.
The level of basketball wasn't very good. Not like The Elite 8 team we’d seen with Coach Tacy, and not like the ACC Champion teams we saw with Coach Odom. Coach Prosser died a sudden death one summer day, and a shattered program was starting a long sojourn in the wilderness.
The basketball was bad.
On the way home my dad said, “It wasn’t a very good game. Still, it was nice to be out here with all of these people.”
My dad loved ice cream.
As their granddaughters became adults, my parents gathered us together one night a week to have dinner at Mayberry's, a local sandwich and ice cream shop. My dad could get his beloved bean and bacon soup there. But mostly, he could get ice cream.
When the server came to ask if we wanted dessert, his eyes always lit up like a little kid making his Christmas list. It was always Moosetracks. He always got Moosetracks.
My niece’s husband stopped by to see my dad not long after my mom died. He offered to get my dad a bowl of ice cream. My dad was glad for the Moosetracks but chided him for too scarce of a scoop. That day my niece’s husband was introduced to a Joe Haymes scoop, which was roughly about one quarter of the carton.
The last thing my father ate on this earth was chocolate ice cream.
Just because they didn't have Moosetracks at hospice.
So here I am at the basketball game.
To most folks I look like a white haired woman eating a cone of ice cream from the Mayberry’s stand along the concourse.
You’d have to get close to see that it’s a scoop (regular sized) of Moosetracks.
You’d have to get close to see my eyes glistening a bit.
You’d have to crawl right inside my heart to see that I am honoring, remembering, and missing my dad all at once.
Sometimes grief rituals are a casserole or a gathering of people remembering.
And sometimes they are a scoop of ice cream at a basketball game.
