Facebook kindly reminded my husband yesterday that on March 6, 2021, my mother apparently came over to our house, sat down at the dining room table, and decided the best course of action was to eat vanilla ice cream directly out of the carton while drinking what I sincerely hope was Scotch.
We do not remember this happening.
What’s more, Facebook chose to pair the photo with the song “Empire of the Sun,” which felt like a wildly overdramatic soundtrack for a woman silently contemplating either:
- the collapse of civilization, or
- whether anyone would notice if she finished the entire gallon.
For context, March 2021 was two months into my cancer treatment. Which means that while this event apparently occurred in my own house during my own life, I have absolutely no recollection of it. Memory from that period is a little like a hard drive that someone dropped down a flight of stairs.
My mother, when shown the picture, immediately said, “It must be AI.”
Which would have been a compelling theory if the photo weren’t timestamped March 6, 2021, back when artificial intelligence was still mostly busy recommending mediocre Netflix shows.
So no, Mom. Survey says: you absolutely did this.
The setting appears to be our dining room. The table is covered with a holiday tablecloth (which suggests this may have been one of the months when time had no meaning and Christmas decorations stayed up indefinitely). We remain unclear about what was in the glass, but my husband and I are choosing to believe it was Scotch, because the alternative is that she drank an entire glass of milk and then chased it with ice cream, which feels unnecessarily aggressive.
At the time, she had just moved into her retirement community, Ashby Ponds, which our family lovingly refers to as “Assby Ponds” (though this nickname has never been officially sanctioned nor, to my knowledge, appreciated).
Looking at the photo now, though, I can’t help thinking the whole scene makes sense: my daughter was finishing high school during COVID; my son’s college had imploded into online classes; I was bald from chemotherapy; and the world was still arguing about sourdough starters.
If ever there were a moment when eating ice cream straight from the carton while staring into the middle distance felt like a rational life choice…
…it was probably March 2021.
Update:
Shortly after publishing this, my mother wrote to clarify several details. First, the drink in the glass was almost certainly not Scotch, as she informs me she “hates Scotch and ice cream” and has apparently tested this combination before. She believes it was probably just water.
Second, she notes that the photograph was taken during the week she was finalizing her move into Assby Ponds. She had just driven to Ashburn, Virginia, to hand over the money for her new residence and was likely contemplating the logistics of the move.
Finally, she suggests the faraway expression captured in the photo may have been the result of living with us for five months while COVID and politics raged outside and “three dogs, two teenagers, and four adults squabbled within.”
Which, frankly, feels like a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Absurdities and Fires 