Ice Cream

Apparently I was getting sick a lot. The doctor tells my parents I need to have my tonsils removed. I am too young to completely understand this. I can barely write my own name--let alone--the word, “tonsils.” But I do understand one word very, very well: “ice cream.” My parents tell me I can eat all the ice cream I want when it’s over. All the ice cream in the world. This takes away some of my fear of the unknown as I’m being wheeled away down a hall to an operating room, fluorescent ceiling lights passing over me like clouds, whales, ships. I am reminded of ice cream again by one of the nurses just before I am put under. Later, I wake up from a strange drug-induced dream, my own version of the Disney movie “Fantasia,” my blood is all over me like I’ve been attacked, and it hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s impossible to swallow. I have no appetite. I feel sick. I can’t imagine ever wanting to eat again. Nothing, not even ice cream, and somehow I feel as though I have been tricked by my parents, the doctors and nurses, God--all of them, they have fooled me--fucked me over. On another sad, strange note: this is the last time I will ever remember seeing my parents together, as in one place (the hospital) as a couple. Somewhere deep inside of me I blame my infected tonsils. But I now know that nothing is ever that simple. Life is complicated. Painful. But, somehow, still beautiful. The truth hurts worse than a lie, worse than any fiction we can make up. But you already know this, right? The joyful bliss of eating ice cream won’t last forever. Childhood ends. We grow up. We forget. And then, years later, the sweet cold memory finds us again.