gelato

On gelato

Gelato is said to be more authentic than ice cream. I like ice cream, but Cold Stone closes early, and anyway, I’m not sure I am convinced by the mashing and mincing with metal tools that goes on at the counters of Cold Stone. The Big Chill is still open, but they serve frozen yogurt, and I do not like the taste of that. Then there is Pinkberry which is expensive frozen yogurt in a tiny bowl. Anything really good is fattening, my mother always said, and I agree with her. Give me real mayonnaise, real butter, and real whipped cream. Which brings me back to ice cream.

When I get to the gelato place, there is a girl working there who looks familiar. She was the popular girl in middle school and my daughter adored her. She tolerated my daughter, or perhaps she liked her. Sort of like how Emme Levin felt about me in middle school. She too was a popular girl, an athlete and an A student, and whenever I read Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroeger, I think of my relationship with her. Like that big blonde guy Tonio admired, (Hans? Klaus? Horst?) Emme was my friend after school, on the bus, and all along the walk home. We would split a hot dog. She found me funny. We laughed about the absurdities of our private girls school. But at school she did not know me. I was never invited to her house. What kind of relationship is that? The girl who knew my daughter is wearing an apron and cleaning tables. She may or may not recognize me – I am much older and not important anyway, since I was and am a parent. I buy the gelato and come home.

The moral of this story is there is no moral. Things that taste good are fattening, and the people that you adored unrequitedly in middle school may not have been worth the trouble, but you don’t wish them ill either. You don’t wish anyone ill, and wish only to immerse yourself in the sweet creaminess that is ice cream. This gelato is icier than ice cream, but not as icy as an Italian ice you’d buy on the street. With its compliment of whipped cream and a cookie, it serves the purpose of some long ago memory, when I sat with my mother at a place called a soda fountain, and there it was – the dish with scoops of perfectly cold stuff. This is ice cream my mother said. And it’s good.

Here’s to having your ice cream when and how you want it. And your friends too.