Me And Mom Go On A Beer(And Ice Cream) Run

We’re getting to the end of 2024, and that means I start eyeing my remaining vacation days like a hawk. Doing the math and figuring out how many days I need to cover my Thanksgiving vacation week, maybe a birthday vacation day, and then the time I need to cover our year-end shutdown. Well, since this year was my anniversary year at work(25 years to be exact) I was gifted an extra week of vacation as a “thank you” of sorts. So looking at my vacation time that’s left last week I saw I’ve got quite a bit still available, so I decided to take last Friday off.

I didn’t have much in mind, but taking a day off work doesn’t require much in my mind. I’ve got plenty to do around the house; be it pre-winter yardwork, holiday decorating, or just good old “me” time listening to records, working on music, painting, or watching movies. I have a wealth of activities to fill my free time with. I’d decided I’d ask my mom if she wanted to get breakfast and run to Fort Wayne with me. I don’t get to do a bunch of stuff with just my mom, and I figured she’d appreciate a little road trip with her youngest. Of course she said sure.

I picked up mom around 10 am and we headed into town for some breakfast at Cozy Cottage, a local greasy spoon staple. It’s always packed since it’s so small, and it’s located across the road from Dalton Foundry and Warsaw Bowl. Though it’s been there for decades, I’d only eaten there for the first time in the last year. My wife and kids have eaten there, as it’s owned and run by our middle kid’s best friend’s parents. I guess I was always at work when they’d go there, so I suppose that makes sense. Glad it finally happened as it’s a great little spot, the kind that gives you plenty of food and you don’t break the bank.

After breakfast we headed to Fort Wayne and stopped at Sweetwater Sound. My mom hadn’t been there since they’d remodeled. There had been some pretty significant changes to the place, with their showroom moving and growing substantially. It’s not like my mom is a musician, but she loves music and I figured she’d appreciate seeing $6,000 guitars hanging on the walls. We even went into the keyboard room and mom got to dink around on a Moog synthesizer. The bored salesman even got up to talk to us, taking a break from making sales tags for the Christmas holiday.

Our final destination of the day was dot & line Brewing Company in Fort Wayne. It was only maybe a 10 minute drive from Sweetwater, located in an industrial park off of Goshen Road. I’d been there once before, back during Pandemic, 2020. I’d gotten into a habit of hitting local breweries to pick up carry-out beer. It was a way for me to find some normalcy in an abnormal time, as well as supporting local brewers during some seriously messed up financial times. My mom went with me on one of those beer runs a couple years ago on a Friday that I took off for just that reason. We hit Bare Hands Brewing in Granger, Indiana.

We made to dot & line just as they opened, and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. My dad gave my mom $20 and asked her to pick him up an ale of some sort. They had a Grolsch-style German ale, so I figured that’d be a solid choice for dad. I ended up getting 3 different hazy IPAs. Figured if I was there I might as well stock up for a week or two. After grabbing our beers we started heading back home.

Mom asked if I could take her to Kroger as she wanted to pick up some pints of Ben n Jerry’s ice cream, so we stopped in Columbia City for an ice cream stop. Between the “buy one get one free” sale, a coupon for one free pint, and $2.75 off if you buy 3, mom ended up getting 8 pints and a package of Hawaiian Rolls for like $20. She made out like an ice cream bandit.

I dropped my mom off and then headed home.

I don’t feel like I do enough with my mom. I do talk to her at least twice a week, calling and filling her in on the kids and what they’re doing. But not like getting lunch or going on beer or ice cream runs with her. I see my dad nearly every Saturday morning as he comes over for coffee, and has been since he retired back in 2014. I need to make a concerted effort to do more of these breakfast or lunch dates with my mom. She just doesn’t get out as much anymore. Her friends that she used to get lunch with or just talk to on the phone aren’t really people she wants to talk to that much anymore. Sometimes you get wiser as you get older, and sometimes you get dumber. Sadly her friends have gone the latter route.

I think my mom is dealing with depression. I think she’s been dealing with depression ever since my grandma died back in February of 2011. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer(my grandma) in 2008 and had beat it, but then in the fall of 2009 it came back in her lungs. We thought she had it beat in the summer of 2010, but then it came roaring back and it wasn’t leaving. Besides that she had heart problems and needed surgery, but they didn’t think she’d make it through, so they couldn’t do it. I think her heart killed her, but the cancer was right behind it.

My mom and my aunt took care of her during those last few months, taking her to appointments and doing things around her house for her. My mom was very close to my grandma anyways. It was a regular spot, both her place on the lake and then on the farm, for my mom and I to go to most of my childhood. But my grandma’s place was a regular visit for my mom even more. Losing her mom left a significant hole in her life and her heart, and she just never recovered from it. I mean, she was there holding her hand as she died in her small house. Pulling in quick shots of air, a blank and emotionless look in her eyes for her last few hours of life. I can’t imagine how traumatizing that was.

I think having grandkids to have over and spend time with was a nice distraction for her, but now that all of her grandchildren are adults with relatively busy lives there’s nothing left to distract from the feeling of time flying by, age, and even that long loss of her mom. My mom is feeling the same way I have been for the last couple years. I’m still dealing with my kids being adults, and that little tinge of sadness over those days of seeing superhero movies or stopping for a sweet treat and a coffee after school are pretty much gone. I’ve been in that transition now for a couple years and am just now finding some kind of normalcy in it. My mom has been going through it for almost 14 years now.

Regardless, it was nice hanging out with my mom on Friday. I need to do it more.

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Rest of the weekend was nice. Saturday the wife and I headed to our 21-year old’s place and took miss Celeste for nice long poop walk. My wife checked out this church that was turned into a bunch of little shops called The Sanctuary. She said it was impressive, and that in the basement someone was selling vinyl, so I need to check it out. While she did that Celeste and I got an hour walk in. Between my walk with the pooch and my morning 4 1/2 mile walk I think I hit over 7 miles and over 13,000 steps.

Sunday I wrote up some reviews then got another 4 1/2 mile walk in. When I got back I put together some ham and potato soup to simmer in the afternoon, then my wife and I did some rearranging in the living room. With a corner open my wife brought up the Christmas tree and set it up. I wasn’t planning on setting anything up for Christmas. It was always for the kids, anyways. I’m not a believer, in God or Santa, so decorating trees and putting up ceramic Santas in the house felt very poser-ish to me. When the kids were little it was different. Just because I thought the reason for the season was bupkis, I didn’t want to push that on the kids. My parents let me enjoy the bubble lights and stockings on the wall, I could at least do the same for my own.

But something interesting happened when I saw that Christmas tree glow yesterday. It was both happiness and a touch of melancholy. It may not remind of babies and mangers or three wise men, but it did remind me of our yearly viewing of Elf on Thanksgiving night with the kids. And it reminded me of the excitement on the kids faces as they pulled ornaments from the big, dusty box and go running to the tree to stake their claim. It reminded me of Christmas Eves and Secret Santa gift exchanges; a stout settling in my pint glass as I’m bombarded with bags of peanut M&Ms and Old Spice variety packs. And of course old family Christmas albums spinning on the turntable, “Oh Tannenbaum”, “Silent Night” from A Peanuts Christmas filling the living room.

I may not believe in the season, per say, but I believe in those memories. I believe in the kids laughing and making funny faces and that giddy excitement. Those memories alone are worth sneezing and wheezing, pulling the tree and those ornaments from the dusty basement. If there’s a reason for the season, in my mind it’s that.