Think of Summer Days Again

One particular Fourth of July, like every fourth of July, the entire clan was descending on our house. Grandma, a powdered and perfumed version of William Tecumseh Sherman whose pats on the back stung for a good five minutes. Grandpa, who slid into a room like a shadow, settled in a chair and was happiest when everyone forgot he was there, just as long as he had a good view of the yard and the birds and any chipmunks that might venture forth. Dad’s sisters and brother and their families: calm, capable, brilliant Marion; dramatic Phyllis, the rule-breaker; Charlie, the baby, who looked up to his older brother and secretly feared he would never measure up. Great aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins, some older folks whose connection to the family was so impenetrable that we gave up trying to figure it out and just enjoyed their company. With girlfriends, boyfriends, new partners, visiting students there might be twenty people coming to the house or there might be forty. This family carnival meant that summer was truly here, sticky, sweaty, breath-robbing summer in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Those summers seemed to stretch on forever, not like these snap-your-fingers-and-they’re-over summers that we get nowadays. Then my cousin Kris and I could spend days–weeks–at each other’s houses, picking mulberries, exploring basements, reading comic books, concocting games, and sharing secrets. I could stay up till all hours watching Basil Rathbone bring Sherlock Holmes to life on the late, late movie and sleep in the next day until noon. I could lie in the hammock all day sipping iced tea and reading The Lord of the Rings. I could play tennis with my dad, then walk into town and order a Napoleon and a pot of Darjeeling at the curiously French tea room. And this was all before the five of us—Dad, Mom, two sisters, and me—piled into the station wagon and headed out of town for our family vacation. Summers moved more slowly in those days.

Back then, summers smelled like honeysuckle and freshly cut grass. They were marked by riotous bursts of rhododendron blossoms and dogwood flowers and fat blue hydrangeas swaying in the desultory, waterlogged breeze. Cicadas chirred, and you’d find their husks clinging to the cherry trees. Fuzzy bumble bees gathered like frat boys and stumbled drunkenly from flower to flower. Monarchs found their milkweed, squirrels cached only gourmet acorns, inchworms measured every marigold.

We took all of this for granted, just as we took for granted that every July third, Dad would start to make his annual batch of ice cream. Early on this particular morning he climbed up to the attic, already hot and stuffy, and dug out the old electric churn, sea foam green, battered, a little rusty, but still up to its yearly job. While Dad took the churn outside to knock the dust off, Mom flicked through the cards in her recipe box and pulled out the stained and battered paper that held the irreplaceable treasure map that was the ice cream recipe. I don’t remember anymore the provenance of the recipe. Great Aunt Alice? An old war buddy? Good Housekeeping? Who knows? Every third day of July there was anxiety in the house about whether the recipe might have gotten mislaid somehow during the adventures of the previous year. But it always turned up, right where it should have been, taking very seriously its responsibility to the clan of folks who were happily anticipating tomorrow’s dish of the best ice cream in the world.

With the most important pieces in place, Dad ran out to the grocery store, for multiple bags of ice, and the hardware store, for rock salt. The electric churn took care of moving the ice cream, but it didn’t take care of freezing it. For that you needed loads of ice sprinkled liberally with rock salt that somehow delayed the melt as it lowered the ice’s temperature. Dad was into chemistry, so don’t ask me. I just know it worked. I loved to watch, peering over the edge of the kitchen counter, as each ingredient went into the mixing chamber. The white velvet ribbons of milk and cream. The snowfall of sugar (an extra dash for good luck). Then the kitchen filled with the warm scent of vanilla, homey and rich.

And that was it. No fancy additions, no exotic flavors. And in our house, adding nuts to anything was a sin tantamount to suggesting JFK wasn’t a great president.

According to Dad, and maybe the rest of the world, but they didn’t count, the ice cream had to be hand-churned for the first few hours. Each of us took a turn at the crank, trading off only when both arms had gone numb. At last, we could let the electric churn take over, periodically draining and repacking the ice in the outer barrel. Even after my sisters and I were in bed, we could hear Dad cracking and crunching and packing ice, aiming for the elusive perfect texture.

Every year, the unveiling and dishing of Dad’s ice cream matched the excitement and anticipation of the Cratchitts awaiting their Christmas Pudding. Had it set properly? Would the consistency be right? Had he added enough sugar? Enough vanilla?

Dad’s ice cream was the best I’ve ever tasted, doubtless that I will ever taste. It was the consistency of soft serve with tiny flakes of ice speckled through it. They added a hint of crunch before they melted in vanilla euphoria on your tongue.

It tasted of the honeysuckle, of bumblebees and dogwood flowers. It tasted of air that was too hot and too humid. It was the flavor of summer light filtered through trees. It was the flavor of childhood: sweet, light, precious.

Ephemeral.