Ice Cream

There was this moment on a little cobbled street in Pienza. The clouds were roiling overhead but it was warm, t-shirt weather. I’d been sitting on the city wall with my mom, having a picnic. We had cups of red wine and panini. Mine was warm, wrapped in butcher paper, prosciutto and fresh tomato. I set it down to rearrange myself; thousand-year-old stone walls, while they afford spectacular Tuscan views, aren’t at all comfortable. My sandwich rolled right off the wall and plunged down the hillside below. I laughed as my mom gasped. She offered me half hers, but I said no, it’s all right, I’ll go find something else. I sort of wanted to wander the streets on my own; Michelle had joined us, so I wasn’t leaving mom without company. I gulped the last of my wine and took off.

All the shop windows were like art galleries, whether they displayed salami and formaggio, earrings and bracelets, blouses and shoes… a person could stroll along and soak it in the same way you would at the Uffizi, or the Louvre. I didn’t want to replace my sandwich - it was gone, the moment passed. It was my third time to Italy but my first tour, and 13 days in I’d tried 13 different flavors of gelato. That was my thing in this country, and I never felt guilty or gluttonous eating ice cream every day. Some days I even had it twice - a luxury that enabled me to repeat a flavor I particularly loved, like stracciatella, or cantaloupe.

Yes, I thought in Pienza, sandwichless and hungry, a thunderstorm imminent - time for my daily gelato. No matter where you were in this amazing country, an ice cream shop was never far away. I kept walking along, unafraid of the weather, expecting what I wanted to appear, and it did, across the street, and it looked perfect, a clean little store with simple neon, likely to have an array of flavors.

Then he stepped into the doorway: my friend from the tour, the funny father of three from South Carolina. I stopped short and watched him. He paused, cup in one hand, little plastic spoon in the other, to take a bite. I watched him slide the spoon into his mouth, watched him close his eyes and roll the bite around, really savoring it, the same way I liked to do. I started walking again, cutting the distance between us in half by the time he opened his eyes. And then he looked at me, our eyes really holding onto that moment on a cobbled street in Pienza, and he said, “Oh my god, you have got to taste this,” and held out his spoon. I walked right up to him and took the taste he offered; I rolled the flavor around the way I like to do, all the while looking at him, him looking at me, and as the ice cream melted on my tongue I thought uh-oh, because I knew, I just knew.