A Ewing Kind of Day

After my Mother’s Day brunch at Corky and Lenny’s this morning, my husband John asked me what else I wanted to do today. I suggested that he and our son and I take a little walk in a park with our dog. He asked which park I would like to visit.

“Euclid Creek or Acacia,” I said. These are two large Metroparks near our house.

“We can’t go anywhere where there are other dogs,” he said. “There’s that dog flu going around.”

I had no response to that.

“Or coyotes,” he added. Coyotes are rumored to have been spotted at Acacia. “Maybe we could go to that park by the Recreation Pavilion.”

“Forest Hills Park,” my son and I said together. “They don’t allow dogs there.”

“They do let dogs there,” he said. “We could go to Cain Park.”

“OK,” I said. “I think maybe they do let dogs at Cain Park. I haven’t been there for a long time. Let’s go there.”

“But there’s nothing to see at Cain Park,” John said. What John likes to see at any park is water. There’s no water at Cain Park.

“Why did you suggest Cain Park then?” I asked.

“I didn’t say Cain Park. I said the park by the Recreation Pavilion.”

My son and I looked at each other. We told John he had suggested Cain Park. He denied it.  Apparently he was mixing the parks up. We dropped it.

Then John said, “We could go up to the lake.” That would fulfill his water-viewing needs, so I said okay. On the way to Lakefront Lodge Park in Willowick, John was wondering out loud about Biagio’s, a doughnut shop somewhere nearby that had recently won Northeast Ohio’s Best Donuts People’s Choice Award. John is a doughnut connoisseur.

At the park, it was overcast and breezy but beautiful. I was wearing a skirt and sandals, not dressed for climbing down the steep slope to the lake and walking on the rocks. I sat on a bench looking out at slate-blue Lake Erie fading into the grayish horizon. The dog sat on my lap. My son returned before John and asked, “What are the chances we’re going to stop for custard on the way home?” I imagined the chances were pretty good.

On the way out of the parking lot, John turned left, and I knew he was headed to CP’s Cooler, an ice-cream shop on Vine Street. We pulled in and took turns watching the dog and going inside to order our ice cream. We sat chatting, and then, as we were finishing our ice cream, John suddenly jumped up, saying, “I’ll go inside and ask them.” My son and I wondered if he was going to ask them why New York City has an ordinance forbidding the exhibition of nitrate film, which is what we had been talking about.

It turned out John wanted to know where the doughnut shop Biagio’s was. Right down the street, as it turned out!  So we headed down Vine Street and pulled into Biagio’s, where John got a bag of doughnuts.

We took the long way home, because John wanted to show us the Ford dealership in Wickliffe where he had recently gotten his car repaired. On the way, he pointed out the route he had walked while waiting for his car to be finished. “And that’s where I got a tattoo,” he said, pointing to the Atom Bomb Tattoo parlor. He was kidding.

When we got home, I took a nap, and then my daughter called. All in all, it was a very nice Mother’s Day.