It came to be a joke after a while. I neither liked root-beer, nor ice cream. This was something Grandma Elsie just could not conceive. I knew she loved Grandpa, and any game of chance, but a root-beer float was not far behind.
I was only apron high when she began offering. “No thank you,” I would say (my mother taught me that — even when I’d rather just wrinkle up my nose). She’d ask, and ask again — certain I just didn’t understand the gold she was offering. Finally, she would make two, and drink both.
I don’t know if it was all that root-beer, or if she instinctively had a little mischief behind that apron. It took me a minute to figure out what she was doing…when I would come through the screen door, all in tears, because someone looked at me too long, or just exhausted from the sun, (it didn’t take much for me to cry)…she would say, “How about a root-beer float?” At first I was disgusted… she didn’t know me at all, I thought. And I had told her so politely. Then I saw the twinkle. No one could twinkle like Grandma Elsie. Even when she was beating you at cards — I mean really destroying you — that spark would jump from the corner of her lip to the corner of her eye, and all we could do was laugh. Soon it became true for any trouble. Any worry I had disappeared with just the offering of a root-beer float.
We had had a long day on the road. I was starving. Several wrong turns. Where was this stupid restaurant? I was merely one screen door away from tears when I saw it. The sign outside of the restaurant. Root-beer floats. I laughed out loud and took a picture. She’s still saving me.
