SUMMER  NIGHTS 

AND  ICE  CREAM  CONES

On a summer night, everyone loves to go for ice cream.

Two boys, one seven, the other nine, stood there that hot summer night eating their ice cream cones. The ice cream was leaking fast. They were experiencing a melt down. The boys were finally “grown up”: mom and dad gave them total control over the choice of what flavors their two scoops of ice cream could be.

Dad always chose two scoops of vanilla.  Cone in hand, he loved to step back to observe the scene. “Great ice cream. Great wife. Great kids. Could anyone be  in a better place, on a clear summer night, than the parking lot of ‘Ice Cream Delight’?” He was at peace. Ice cream can do that. Inwardly he was also thinking, “These last four months at work have been too stressful. Thank God, the project is finally over. The orders are all filled. Things will slow down now -- at least till September.”

Mom was more flamboyant. Maybe that’s why they married each other. They were “order” and “disorder”, vanilla and thirty-seven different flavors. She stood their enjoying the taste of chocolate-chocolate chip. And that was just the top scoop. Underneath was her second scoop: raspberry sherbet-twirl with raisins! The kids loved this about their mom: she ordered different flavors every time. And she always ordered last. She loved surprises, last minute, spur of the moment choices She knew her sons stood there waiting to hear her choices at the sliding window.

Mom was smiling “big time”. She was enjoying the summer night sky. Summer. Vacation. Her boys. Her husband. But she also loved September when the house returned to quiet with the boys back in school. She had  a computer and was back to writing while the boys were at school and her husband was at work.

Back to the boys.

One stood there delighting in his pistachio and peach cone. He too enjoyed the night sky. And after each twirling lick of his ice cream, he would close his eyes. He loved to feel the cold ice cream against his teeth and tongue and then to feel it slide down his throat heading for his tummy.

His brother wasn’t happy. He usually wasn’t. He was hardly tasting his ice cream. Once more he felt that he made the wrong choices. Seeing the delight on his brother’s face, he was wishing he too had gotten pistachio and peach. And it dug deeper into his pain, especially when his Dad said to his brother, “You really seem to be enjoying that!”

“Yeah, dad, I really am. U-m-m-m good!”

And that’s the way the four of them were for the rest of their lives.

© Andy Costello, Down to Earth But Looking Up, p. 61