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Ice Cream, Episode I

[During the last half of April Becky and I visited Carrie and all the Motley Boys: Kyle, Sean, Ryan, and Scott Motley. Of the 1,000 stories I could tell of the experience, here's one.]

Well. I missed shooting Part I. (And boy did I miss something.)

After spending a Saturday afternoon walking up and down a river in Auburn, CA, skipping stones, and taking in the blue sky and mountain air, we stopped by McDonalds for a soft ice cream cone. It was a pretty hot day.

Everyone got their own one, except Kyle. He was just turning one year old. I ate the top portion of my cone, then handed the cone and a short mound of ice cream to Kyle. He was sitting wedged in the corner next to Grandma Becky.

So, he puts the cone up to his mouth, and begins tasting, then eating it. After a few seconds of getting the full measure of the vanilla taste, he suddenly realizes how REALLY good this ice cream stuff REALLY is. He raises both his hands (cone still in one hand), and with a wide-eyed, big wide smile he let's loose with a gleeful, joyful, superbly-satisfied laugh. He was SO pleased with his new discovery.

I perceived also that he really liked the idea that he could personally control the amount of intake of said soft, sweet vanilla goodness. IOW, constant intake. He didn't have to wait till someone doled out small bites, one at a time. For the next 10 minutes or so, he kept the ice cream pressed up to his mouth, barely taking time to breath (except through his ice cream-covered nose). He ate the ice cream, then consumed the remaining cone. The base of the cone in one fell swoop. (BTW: The very bottom of a regular ice cream cone that has had soft ice cream pushed down into it, is one of life's great simple pleasures. The last bite! And what a bite it is. A cool, sweet, combination of sweet, soft, and crunchy. Always a pleasure. (Well, if you take the time to push the ice cream down into it, it is.)

Anyway, Kyle was all grown up, handling and consuming with his big brothers an ice cream cone. Half the way through, we took the cone away from his face for a few seconds to see his face, etc. The skin around his mouth was red, I think, with coldness. But he didn't care. I think his tender baby skin was being "frozen" just a bit with the constant frozen ice cream pushed up against his face. But he loved it. No pain. Later, Grandma Becky took his cone away from him for just a few seconds. He was not happy. He let it be known how this was not good. He began a continued protest until his Mom put the cone back into his mouth. Instant reminder; instant gratification.

Never to be forgotten is his joyful, facial declaration to us all of his wonderful discovery. Pure joy. ("Except ye become as little children.")

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