I jumped off the bus at the corner, next to the little ice cream shed. I stopped to take a lactaid pill out of my bag, pausing to consider if I should take my water bottle out, or would I suffer the chalky fake orange taste of this technically-chewable tablet? I crunched and swallowed quickly, before ordering. This week their feature soft-serve flavour is a classic chocolate. I’ve been thinking about this for days - I thought I would come last week for a different flavour, but the day I could go it rained and the shack was closed.
I pay and am presented with a towering cone of vanilla and chocolate soft-serve. I eat it as I walk down Spring Garden, seeing how far I can get before the cone is done. I’m still in the honeymoon stage at work; but I’m also old enough now, have worked long enough now, that sometimes the only thing getting me through the work week is a plan for a little treat. An ice cream on the way home in the summer. I never did this, before, but also, there wasn’t a convenient place for ice cream on my travels in Miramichi. Maurie’s was on the way home, but they only take cash, and I never had any. Ice cream was a treat I didn’t often get. There are endless options from multiple places for me, the menus ready to salsify my cravings. This is proper city living, any kind of ice cream you could want, whenever.
“We should go to Dee Dee’s,” I announced, as we rounded the final block of the Pride Parade. Brett looked at me and sighed, but he loves ice cream and we were both very hot from our sunny walk in the parade.
I won, and we’re off - technically, Dee Dee’s is just about on the way home from the garrison grounds, where the parade ended, and I’m not even steering us out of our way. We were not the only ones with that idea. The line stretches out the door and onto the sunny sidewalk.
Brett got Mexican Chocolate, a spicy chocolate. I got their summer smash flavour, a special one for pride: Space Fog, which is blueberry, mango and banana. Dee Dee’s makes their own ice cream. It’s glorious. We splurged for waffle cones, a luxury we’re both in firm agreement on: if we’re getting a cone while out, we want a delicious waffle cone and not a shitty cone.
My new routine, after a session with my therapist (and one she told me was a great idea for treating myself after the work we do together), is to go grab a cone before I hop on the bus to go home. This is a new therapeutic relationship, and it is delicate, as I feel when I leave. Working on yourself like this is exhausting, but I know I need to be here, to sort myself out, to figure out how to cope. My traumas and struggles are laid bare. My nose is stuffed from tears.
With a deep breath before I rejoin the world outside of the air conditioned therapy office, I stride toward the Leonidas just off Spring Garden. They have soft serve they dip in their fancy chocolate, and I could use some decadence. A treat to say, hey, you did the hard thing of showing up. Don’t run away, come back in a couple weeks to keep going. You can get another ice cream then.
I pick a mini vanilla dipped in crunchy hazelnut chocolate. It’s still enormous, and I melt into the chocolate shell.
I was going to be alone for the evening, and I thought about what I should do: laundry. Dishes. Reading. Writing a book review.
Eating ice cream.
I race through a few things - pop clothes in dryer, empty the dishwasher, package leftovers into containers. When I take an Advil for a headache before heading out the door, my stomach revolts and I spend the next few minutes kneeling on the bathroom floor, emptying the perfectly good supper I enjoyed into the toilet. I’m not happy about it, especially since it was a particularly tasty one.
Being hit with nausea while alone is never fun, but I have eight years of practice, so while I wish I could call Brett into the bathroom right now with a glass of water, I do the next best thing: I lay on the cool floor till I feel like I can stand up and get my own water.
After several minutes of drinking water and starting to feel normal again, I’m left with a problem: there’s no food in my stomach. It’s 7:30 PM. I’m not going to eat the leftovers I’m saving for lunch at work tomorrow, and also - I prefer something softer when my stomach is in distress but I still need to eat.
I could have apple sauce. Or I could return to my original mission: ice cream.
I go for two scoops when I get there. It’s exactly the antidote to my problem.
I’m lactose-intolerant. I learned this at the beginning of 2014, after experiencing a number of digestive issues for months, finally food journalling to figure out what was wrong, and promptly throwing up after Christmas dinner, in which I ate a wonderful, giant scoop of mashed potatoes full of cream, butter, and Boursin cheese. My stomach couldn’t handle it, and after allowing myself to recognize what was happening, I was bereft. I love cheese. I love ice cream and milk and dairy-based products of all kinds. I grew up drinking a delicious glass of milk every dinner. My favourite noodle-based dishes involve absurd amounts of cheese.
I assume I was deeply unpleasant to live with for a few weeks, after we got rid of all the dairy and I started trying to use substitutes. Brett came home from class one day, triumphant. “I got you a present,” he announced. He pulled out a block of cheese from the grocery store. House-brand. Clearly labelled “lactose-free.”
I was going to be okay. I didn’t know it at the time, but I developed my lactose-intolerance just as there was going to be an explosion of readily-accessible lactose-free products. I use some dairy-free items, but I’ve mostly transitioned to lactose-free items. With the discovery of lactose-free sour cream a couple months ago, I officially have lactose-free substitutes for everything I could want.
I do eat lactose-free ice cream, but in experimentation with different lactaid pills (for when dairy is inevitable or I don’t want to deprive myself) and what I can and cannot consume, I’ve circled back around to allowing myself to enjoy ice cream with a pill. I’d rather have good, delicious ice cream, and focus on avoiding dairy in other contexts.
This is the summer of coming back to ice cream.
Seven months ago, I got off the bus from work a stop early and walked up to Dee Dee’s, which as you can probably tell from these stories, is very close to our apartment. They make their own ice cream, with a rotating set of interesting and delicious flavours. They also sell burritos.
It was the end of my very first week of work at my new job. I had survived. I had made it. I was exhausted, and I marched up to get a cone of ice cream in the beginning of January. It started snowing as I was walking, and I pulled up my hood.
Canadians know that winter is actually the best time to eat ice cream, because it won’t melt. Ice cream sells more in the winter in Canada, which I remember explaining to my Bermudian friends in undergrad. They were confused that we always had ice cream in meal hall, and even more confused when they saw everyone continue to scoop it through winter. But ice cream in winter is the best, and so I had chosen it for my “you got through week 1” treat.
I got a scoop of mint chocolate chip, the ice cream I missed the most in the years I didn’t eat anything but vegan and lactose-free ice cream. My sibling once told me about a vegan mint chocolate chip, when their roommate was vegan. I managed to find a container in Miramichi, and it was glorious. I never found it again.
A scoop of mint chocolate chip, in a waffle cone. I thanked the server and went out into the snow. The cold mint and crunchy chocolate are glorious. I’m probably going to be okay.
Oh Alison, you write so beautifully, even when the subject matter is a tough one. Another terrific read - and you've got me wanting ice cream! I love that you have options open to you despite your intolerance to lactose.
When I was little, at the ice cream van I would always opt for a choc-ice or an orange-flavoured ice lolly instead of a tall swirl of that vegetable-oil-based soft-serve on a 'standard' wafer cornet. I HATED the cornets, with their nasty, dusty flavour and, if you were very unlucky and got one which had been stored for months, the chewy texture of cardboard.
When I first visited Germany as a teenager I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the ice cream - the variety was amazing, and the waffle cones delicious. I must have tried out every three-scoop combination - my favourite was a stack of dark chocolate, cherry, then yoghurt. First the acid tang of the yoghurt merging into the strong cherry flavour, which went so beautifully with that last scoop of chocolate.
As vegans, we don't eat dairy at all, but we like ice cream at times. The best solution for us was to get a Ninja Cremi and make our own. (Which takes the fun out of looking at a menu and deciding which flavour appeals to your mood at the moment.) Also: good on you for seeking out therapy! 😊