The Ice Cream Lady
By third grade, I wasn’t just the new kid; I was the kid with a story no one could understand. That year, my life tilted into a place even I couldn’t fully process. It was the year of my first documented suicide attempt. Looking back, I see the warning signs in my journals, in my schoolwork, even in the stories I banged out on Mama J’s typewriter.
Trauma doesn’t come with a guidebook, and as a child, I didn’t have the words to articulate the feelings of sadness, confusion, or fear that lived inside me. The adults around me loved me deeply, but each was walking through their own maze of challenges. My mom, juggling the roles of both parent and provider, poured her energy into keeping us afloat in a new world. Mama Jean, ever steady, created a safe environment, but even her calm presence couldn’t shield me from the internal storm brewing in my mind.
The school counselor, however, noticed. Every Friday, she would pull me out of class and take me to Swenson’s Ice Cream Shop. I always ordered bubble gum—a bright pink scoop with tiny pieces of gum hidden inside. She asked questions, but I didn’t always answer. Sometimes the words felt stuck, like a knot in my throat that only the typewriter could untangle.
Looking back, I can see how the pieces of the puzzle began to form a picture. At the time, though, it was all fragments. A family thrown together by necessity, each of us carrying pieces of unspoken pain and resilience. My journals from that year are a mixture of childish handwriting and profound sadness, as if I were trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together.
The ice cream lady must have talked to Mama J, because one day after school, Mama J took me shopping for a thick stack of typing paper and extra carbon sheets. "So you can make copies," she said. "You can share your stories with your counselor."
I remember the sense of relief that washed over me. Mama J didn’t pry; she didn’t ask me to explain my thoughts. Instead, she gave me the tools I needed to process them. The ice cream lady didn’t know that my real therapy was happening late at night, when I sat at the typewriter and poured my tangled thoughts onto paper. And Mama J—kind, patient Mama J—just kept replacing the ribbons, letting me write.
Forty years later, I can see the full picture with clarity. Every act of love, every moment of patience, every effort to help me find my voice—they were puzzle pieces, fitting together to form a story of survival and hope. Back then, I didn’t know what I was writing toward. I only knew that the typewriter’s clacking rhythm was the one thing that made sense in a world that often didn’t.
