Felice said she'd only seen her father cry once. In the funeral home, in front of her grandfather's casket.
We spent the afternoon at the Plant. The multiplex on the site where they used to make Camaros. We saw "Cars".
Maybe I went because it's the Apple religion, but the sheer creativity was awe-inspiring. The fact that John Lasseter and his team built this artwork from scratch, their only goal being to wow those who saw it. The subtleties made you ooh and ahh. Made you want to go home and create something out of thin air, to relish the process of employing one's powers, concocting something to enrapture others, with no limits holding you back.
After the movie ended, we stopped at Whole Foods to buy steaks to barbecue on Felice's new grill. And it was after consuming said beef, in the air-conditioned comfort of Felice's dining room, that Felice made the above pronouncement.
And while she was reminiscing about praying the dachsund her father ran over in the driveway wouldn't die, I suddenly thought of Chunky Monkey. A container of which she'd purchased upon my rave. Did she still have it?
Felice smiled and said yes.
I went into the kitchen and retrieved it.
Ben & Jerry no longer own their company. Chalk it up to the vagaries of distribution. But for a while there, their operation was the Apple Computer of its day. You believed in it.
And they didn't just offer chocolate and vanilla. They concocted flavors inconceivable to the layman. Like Cherry Garcia and Phish Food. And Chunky Monkey.
Chunky Monkey is simpler than most of their flavors. But no one ever came up with the idea before.
It's got flakes of chocolate. Like someone was whittling a bar of Ghiradelli. And walnuts, not broken bits, but entire halves. And they're swirled within banana ice cream. Which is not pungently sweet, but akin to the finest vanilla, with just a hint of the taste of the yellow fruit.
I went to the drawer to retrieve spoons, but rather than return to the dining room I stopped at the microwave. I'd been telling Felicee about the bouquet, how you had to serve Ben & Jerry's soft. And if you didn't have time to let it soften, you just gave it a whirl in the microwave.
How many seconds did it take again? I didn't want to turn the ice cream into soup.
Figuring half a minute was too little and 45 seconds too much, I settled on 35. And as I stood there, as the container rotated on the glass under the light, as Felice expressed anxiety from the other room, it became obvious, I was being my father.
Oh, my father loved ice cream. And brought half gallons home from Friendly's on a regular basis.
But by time the gourmet brands had hit the scene, we were long gone from the house. But when we returned from our sojourns, sometimes after a year, it would be a ritual. Every night my father would stand in front of the microwave softening the pints he retrieved from the freezer. And after taking a spoonful, making sure the consistency was just right, he'd walk around the house, spooning and eating.
I returned to the dining room table. Felice dipped her utensil in. And when that smile crossed her face, I felt like Morris once again, thrilled that I'd engendered enjoyment in another.
Felice's father is gone now. But so many of his characteristics live on in her.
I had no idea how many of my dad's traits still live on in me.
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