There’s a story about Nathaniel and time, but I have no time to tell it tonight.
I do, however, have both time and impulse to relate a little tale about ice cream (Serena was craving ice cream today and may have mentioned it a few hundred times).
Whwn I was about 7 or 8 I accompanied my parents on some expedition to the local small shopping center, the one in the middle of town that had the movie theater (2 screens), the Baskin-Robbins, and about 5 or 6 shops. A jeweler’s. Don’t remember the rest.
I was allowed to purchase an ice cream cone and consume it, alone, while my parents conducted whatever business they had.
Baskin-Robbins was a semi-annual or so treat. My dad will tell you that the black cherry was best, but I preferred to try various flavors depending on my mood. Choosing among all those colorful and delicious-looking flavors was often difficult and it seemed like it took hours each time to make a choice.
On this particular day I chose an old standby, a deep and dark chocolate. I felt quite grown up paying for it myself and then slowly walking under the colonnade, peering in the shop windows and eating my ice cream. I had quite a while to wait for my parents, and had to make the circuit more than once, but I enjoyed imagining what it would be like to want the jewelry in the window, for instance, and I read all the posted signs more than once. People passed by me from time to time, and I could imagine them thinking how well-behaved I was, how grown up. I was a little like them, those people, even though they were so much older than I, but we shared this experience of being in the same place at the same time. Some smiled at me encouragingly.
I finished my ice cream and carefully threw away my napkin in a trash container. So grown up. Finally my parents came and we drove back home.
It was not until later that I chanced to look in the mirror, seeing the very obvious after-effects of eating a very dark chocolate ice cream cone still on my face, surrounding my entire mouth.
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