Ice Cream

At just 7:30 this morning, my daughter's alarm clock rang and she woke up, missing mummy a lot.

"Hey, I told you, mom has an operation this morning. Dear, let me help you." "Mommmmmmmmmmm, I want mummy."

I glanced at the clock on the wall, the steady sweep of the second hand ticking off precious time, getting closer and closer to the school bus time. My goal was to get my daughter ready before the school bus departed. I knew I couldn't. I was harried; my daughter was weeping; we were overwhelmed. I felt time slipping away.

Before all the tension boiled over, I decided to read a story book together with Jasmine while she had her cereal breakfast. My pick was Should I Share My Ice Cream? by the Caldecott Honor winner Mo Willems. That's a story about Elephant Gerald who bought an ice cream and then had a big decision to make: Should he share his ice cream with his best friend Piggie? An agonizingly difficult choice. Gerald wanted to gobble up his ice cream, but then wondered: Is it right not to share with his best friend?

"Hmmm ... Maybe Piggie does not like this flavour! Piggie is not here. She does not know I have ice cream." The answer, we believed, is difficult.

"Hurry up, Gerald, make up you mind," Jasmine said instinctively as she turned the pages, with a palpable sense of suspense. The ice cream was melting in Gerald's hand. So absorbed was Jasmine in reading the ice cream story that, by the time we reached the last page of the storybook, she hadn't had time to finish her cereals.

Of course, I shouldn't tell you the story ending here. Not so lightly. Which reminds me of another real ice cream story few days ago. We were buying ice cream for dessert after dinner last Sunday. At first Jasmine wanted to pick vanilla flavour. Then, she hesitated and ran to my wife, "Mum, do you want to share my ice cream? And if so, I will choose chocolate flavour, your favourite." Isn't it even sweeter than having ice cream itself? My wife counts it among her most-treasured moments as a mom. As it turns out, this is the closest to the ending of our storybook Should I Share My Ice Cream?