“Hang on a second, Margaret, I just need to fill this ice tray. In fact, why don’t you watch how I do this?” I turned on the tap, held the tray under the running water, turned the water back off, and returned the tray to the freezer.
“Done. And in a few hours, that will become ice!” My youngest daughter should have known this by now—she was 15 after all.
Before you ask, let me explain. We didn’t have an ice maker. Our house is older and though we’ve tried a couple of times, we just couldn’t get an ice maker to function properly. We gave up and reverted to good, old-fashioned, ice trays.
Now, I love ice in my drinks. I’ve said many times, “If you get me a cup of ice, you’ll be my favorite child!” This rule applies to my own children, nieces and nephews, kids at church, and, okay, perfect strangers. I like my ice. And so does Margaret. Only Margaret is in the habit of returning empty or nearly empty trays to the freezer without refilling them. This, I’ll admit, is a tiny little problem in the realm of parenting. But still.
Margaret watched my ice-tray-refilling lesson with bored disinterest. “Okay,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, her eyes already starting to giggle, “But I’ve found that if you just put the trays back empty, they eventually refill themselves.”