Word: Longing

Word courtesy: The ice cream freezer outside a neighbourhood grocery store. Funny how a glass door can separate wanting from having.

The story I have with it:

The moment I hear the word longing, I think of ice cream.

Growing up, my relationship with ice cream was unnecessarily complicated.

My throat had other plans for my childhood.

What began as tonsillitis eventually became pharyngitis, and somewhere along the way, I was declared unfit for anything cold. Ice cream, cold drinks, even chilled water came with warnings, negotiations and consequences.

Then there was the second complication.

Money.

The everyday orange popsicles, which were easier on the pocket, used to upset my stomach. The only ice creams that suited me were the slightly expensive ones and in our childhood in my country, that was only Kwality Walls.

And we were not the kind of family where those appeared casually.

So an ice cream was never just an ice cream.

It depended on my throat.

It depended on the weather.

It depended on whether my father could afford it that month.

If all three aligned, I got one.

Maybe once every two or three months.

Which is why one afternoon still lives so vividly in my memory.

We had gone out for our annual shopping.

My throat was behaving.

The sun was shining.

And my father said yes.

I chose the new Walls Feast Cup.

I still remember the blue plastic lid. The matching blue spoon to scoop out the nutty chocolate! Yummy indulgence indeed.

It wasn’t just dessert.

It felt like luxury.

Like I had somehow won a prize.

I ate painfully slowly, trying to make every spoonful last a little longer.

Then, just as we stepped out of the shopping complex, a young beggar boy came up to us asking for money.

My father looked at me.

Then at the cup in my hand.

“You’ll get to eat this again someday,” he said quietly.

“He probably never will.”

Then he added,

“Didn’t I teach you to share?”

I don’t remember saying anything.

I just remember holding that cup a little tighter before handing it over.

My father was right.

I know that today.

But the little girl inside me did not become generous that afternoon.

She became acquainted with longing in a completely different way.

Until then, longing meant waiting months for an ice cream.

That day, it also meant watching the thing you had waited months for disappear from your own hands.

I have eaten far better ice creams and nutty cold indulgences since then. Incidentally, I ain’t that of an ice cream person today.

Whenever I want.

Without checking the weather.

Without checking my throat.

Without checking my father’s wallet.

But somehow, no ice cream has ever tasted as precious as that little blue Feast Cup.

Perhaps because longing has a strange way of sweetening the things it cannot keep.