An Ice Cream Man is Born

Buying great gifts is a gift I do not possess.  To me, everyone, with the exception of babies and dogs, is hard to buy for.  Gift cards were created for people like me I reasoned, but sometimes, you just have to buy a gift!  That was the dilemma I faced two weeks before Father’s Day, when I found myself being tortured at the mall by an onslaught of gift ideas.  Cloning our cat in our laundry room would have been easier than convincing my daughter to give Daddy a simple, “boring” gift card.  I could have shown her piles of tossed aside gifts from birthdays, Father’s Days and Christmases past – things I would have bet my left kidney that he’d have loved – but I knew she wouldn’t be swayed.  The gift card could be for a million dollars, but to a little girl, it still wouldn’t have been as good as the gift of a shoe shine kit or a new sprinkler.

To her credit, she came up with a fantastic idea, which proves that the ability to buy great gifts is not inherited.  Having seen a TV show about making your own ice cream and knowing how much Dad loves ice cream, we put two and two together and bought him … an ice cream maker!  Despite her glowing confidence that this was indeed the “perfect” gift for Dad, I wasn’t so sure.  I’d been down this road many times before – so excited to see him tear open the gift I just knew he’d spend three days telling people about only to have him react to it as if I’d wrapped up last night’s leftovers.  After all, making ice cream and eating ice cream are two different things … kind of like the difference between making a baby and having a baby.  I saved the receipt.

Father’s Day came and as he opened the homemade cards and gifts from the dog and cats (who curiously seem to always have more money than the humans in our house), we waited anxiously for him to get to the big gift.  Would he absolutely love it or would I be driving back to the mall later?  Where did I put that receipt anyway?  Even he looked wary as he reached for the big box dotted with every metallic bow our daughter could find.  As he slowly unwrapped it, I could see him already forming his “Wow, this is so great, thanks!” game face, but when he saw the ice cream maker box, he broke into a huge grin and his eyes genuinely sparkled.  He read the entire box three times and then dove inside to assemble his Holy Grail.  The best part, he declared, was that this was a gift the whole family could use.  Then, he shot up the stairs two at a time to look for recipes on the Internet.

It’s been nearly a week now and we’ve made ice cream every night.  When he said it was a gift the whole family could enjoy, he wasn’t kidding.  Having quickly tired of the standard chocolate and vanilla, my family now seems bent on turning new and “exotic” ice cream flavors, like marshmallow grapefruit, chocolate pineapple and beer, into an art form with each one trying to top the other’s creations.  Meanwhile, Dad is surfing the Internet in search of a car charger for his beloved ice cream maker.

Well, not only did we score a bullseye with this gift, I learned something new.  In our house, making ice cream IS as much fun as making babies … at least for some of us!