Making Milkshake Memories

I had ten baskets of laundry to fold yesterday.

Jealous, aren't you?

The only time I watch TV is while I'm folding laundry, and one of our family's favorite shows is "Chopped" on the Food Network--family friendly, interesting food choices, and a little competition to boot. When I turned on the TV, the previous show was ending with a mom and her son pouring thick, chocolately ice cream goodness into milkshake glasses and sharing a moment as they drank them. This image triggered a happy memory repeated dozens of times in my life.

My dad loves chocolate milkshakes. I remember watching Mom place the blender attachment on her first generation Bosch, fill it to the line with milk, then add Hershey's syrup and scoop after scoop of vanilla ice cream. We kids would rotate who got to turn the knob and begin the "shaking" stage. It didn't take long until Mom was dumping the mixture into our smallest plastic cups, measuring by molecules as she tried to avoid the "He got more than me" argument.

Dad always got the biggest cup in the house. He would take his big cup to the kitchen table, where he spread out the newspaper and relished both the ice cream and the sports section. Unlike us kids, Dad never used a spoon. He would tip that big cup back and expertly jiggle it until just the right amount landed in his mouth. We would try to mimic him, but we usually ended up with a huge dollop on the end of our nose or all over our face and down the front of our jammies.

I made milkshakes last night.

My kids all asked for colorful straws, not spoons, and no one jiggled a big lump onto their face. They are much smarter than we were, I suppose--the milkshake wisdom from a previous generation passing down to them. Micah told me, "Just sayin', Mom, but you make better milkshakes than Sam's Club."

I learned from the best.