My dad was one of seven children. Nearly all of his siblings started their own families in the same place they were raised, a Maryland suburb near Washington, D.C. called Cheverly. My dad moved a thirty-minute drive north on I-95 to another suburb, Columbia. This is where I grew up. Living so close to his family, my younger sister and I were fortunate enough to pay frequent visits to Cheverly. We built relationships with our paternal aunts, uncles, and cousins. Of course, we became very close with our grandparents.
Above all else, my grandparents value family, and they’ve instilled this value immovably into their children, their children’s children, their great-grandchildren (as soon as they have some). They live in the same two-story house my dad grew up in. The five-bedroom, two-bathroom nucleus of our family’s identity continues to be a hub for family gatherings, like the massive Thanksgiving dinners my grandparents have hosted for more than forty consecutive years—the only exception was in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. It’s a symbol of how tightly-knit our family has always been. The odd relative or two or three can be found living there for months at a time. At any given point in my lifetime, close to two dozen members of my extended family have lived close to my grandparents, and Cheverly has always comprised the roots of our family tree.
But once every few years growing up, my grandparents would organize a trip to Columbia, my home, for the whole family. In Columbia, we had Toby’s Dinner Theatre. My grandparents love musicals, which Toby’s put on almost exclusively, and the added bonus of a buffet-style dinner before every show made an evening at the theater an irresistible opportunity for family bonding. So my grandparents bought tickets for the whole family, essentially making an entire corner of Toby’s our domain. We saw Fiddler on the Roof, Showboat, and on and on.
I love my grandparents, and I love my family. But I hate musicals. I’ve never once enjoyed a moment of my life spent watching a musical. They’re too long, too obvious, too contrived, and just plain boring. So whenever I begrudgingly found myself at Toby’s with my dad, sister, grandparents, and about fifteen other family members, I had only one thing on my mind to get me through the next four hours: the ice cream bar.
On this particular outing, we’d come to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If I could endure any Toby’s musical, it would surely be Joseph. True to my Jewish heritage, I would listen to the soundtrack on my CD-playing clock radio before bed every night as a kid—at the time, I wasn’t yet old enough to form an opinion on different musical genres. Pulling into the Toby’s parking lot, though, I hadn’t listened to Joseph in years and my opinions on show tunes were firmly established. As my cousins and I found the Lang Section of the theater and established the evening’s kids’ table—essential to family mealtimes no matter where we were—I hoped the songs would inspire more nostalgia in my twelve-year-old self than they did nausea.
After braving the hectic buffet line, a health inspector’s worst nightmare, I returned to my seat at the kids’ table. Talking and laughing with my cousins, I tried my best to distract myself from the tasteless amalgamation of complex carbohydrates, soggy steamed vegetables, and wilted garden salad I’d assembled. After picking at the plate before me for about twenty minutes, I finally heard the PA crackle to life and that coveted announcement, however garbled, resonated through the theater:
“Tables 20 to 25, you may now proceed to the—” I had already jumped to my feet and was halfway down the aisle, cousins hot in pursuit. Finally, finally!
Despite my quick reaction time, I found myself in line behind a dozen people. I watched a greasy-haired teenager reach up to his elbow into a five-gallon tub of already-melting vanilla ice cream, doling out scoops into each of the empty styrofoam bowls laid out on the table. The line in front of me dwindled and finally, I was close enough to claim a scoop for myself. Now some critical decision-making. On a second table were more styrofoam bowls, but these were filled with M&M’s, crushed Oreos, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, maraschino cherries, and peanuts. I spooned a generous heap of chocolate sprinkles onto my ice cream and added a single cherry for garnish. A second sullen kid waited at the end of the table with a can of whipped cream in one hand and a bottle of chocolate sauce in the other. I got both.
Back at the table, I swirled my plastic spoon in the chocolatey, lactose-laden sundae. The ice cream was almost entirely melted now and would have rivaled Joseph’s dreamcoat, blending with the chocolate sauce into a light tannish color streaked with red maraschino syrup. A few sprinkles were still visible, not yet submerged in the soupy concoction. I didn’t have much time before it would be impossible to eat my ice cream, especially in pitch darkness once the show started. So despite my wishes to make the treat last through the agonizingly dull two hours ahead of me, I began to eat.
Much to my displeasure, my dad wandered over to my end of the table, spoon in hand, and stole my maraschino cherry. He had foregone dessert, as adults often do to impress other adults, and now regretted his decision. I gave him a withering stare as he leaned down to kiss the top of my head smugly before returning to his seat. The lights flickered on and off and then dimmed. Another disembodied voice announced to the theater that the show would soon begin thanks to some sponsor or another. In the semi-darkness, my sense of taste was heightened. With each bite came a new sensation to my palate. A suffocatingly large glob of whipped cream overpowered the ice cream’s flavor in one. In another, I was taken by the stale chewiness of the sprinkles, which tasted nothing like chocolate. I coughed as an unexpected ribbon of congealed chocolate sauce flew down my windpipe.
As I made my way through the dish, there was hardly anything left beyond an absurd amount of sprinkles piled at the bottom. Sweet, creamy vanilla-chocolate goodness succumbed to the plastic taste of the spoon. I scraped the last of the liquid ice cream from the sides of the bowl, surely ingesting trace amounts of styrofoam in my last few bites. With nothing left but the sprinkles, which now made my stomach turn to look at, I pushed the bowl away and reluctantly turned my chair to face the stage.
Darkness fell over the theater, and the overture to another devastatingly long musical odyssey began. My stomach growled softly for nutrients, containing far more ice cream than it did buffet food. But as Jacob and sons burst into song, I was content to sit back and dig chocolate sprinkles out of my molars with my tongue, feeling sufficiently rewarded for my sacrifice—hours I would’ve preferred to spend in bed, reading a book or watching a movie: real, quality entertainment.
Around forty-five minutes into the first act, I became antsy. I had to pee. I wondered what time it was, how much longer I had to suffer before intermission. But at the same time, my twelve-year-old brain could somehow comprehend the importance of my presence there, what it meant to my grandparents that I came. I was an invaluable component of the family unit they’d created. I was surrounded by people who loved me unconditionally, many of whom despised musicals as much as I did. We were bound by an everlasting force I’d someday share with sons, daughters, and grandchildren.
It was hard to get my head around the notion of being a grandparent, but I recognized the possibility. Someday I could torment my kin with a tradition of my own, some outdated activity from the 2010s that I still loved. They would love me for making them do it almost as much as I loved them for showing up. And whatever activity that might be, I decided, twelve and hungry and bored and oddly introspective, I would make sure there was ice cream involved.
Charlotte Lang is a junior at DePaul studying Psychology and minoring in Creative Writing. She also works at the Writing Center and facilitates Writers Guild, where she got great feedback on this piece! Charlotte loves to cook, exercise, and talk to strangers on the Red Line. This is the first time her work has appeared in a literary magazine.