i was in a particularly spoiling mood today. when i came down off the subway in astoria, i saw that my local florist was selling carnations on the cheap. now, usually, i hate carnations. but there’s something about that startlingly fake shade of pink carnation that brings out the girly-girl in me. so a bought a dozen, flirted, and got three for free.
then, on my errand run in my favourite brasilian flip-flops, capri-cut-offs of my sacred holey jeans, and my dad’s old polo… i did it again. i treated myself. again, to something pink. only this time, i heeded the ice-cream siren and steered into carvel.
the thing about pink this time, thought, was part of a larger adoration for strawberry ice cream. i think it started when my parents and i spent our summers traipsing around greece. anyone who’s been to greece and eaten ice cream knows what i’m about to explain – greeks do not know how to make strawberry. it’s not that rich ballet-pink creamy goodness of a haagen daaz or a breyers. oh, no.
rather, it’s this insane acid pink, like your jellies in the eighties, like those bike streamers you loved. it’s pink like little girls seem to always intrinsically understand pink to be. and it takes like strawberry gum, not actual strawberries. it’s sweet and cloying and … pink. and as a little girl, i simply could not get enough of it.
as i grew older, my taste veered more towards the real strawberry ice creams. so when i ordered my two-scoop sugar-cone of pretty-princess-pink carvel, i was wary. i started licking as i flip-flopped my way home. but my world shifted a little. my pace slowed. i cared less that i was wrapping my tongue almost obscenely around the cone. when the rumpled old greek men asked me to marry them from the streetside cafes, i laughed instead of scowled. my hips swung less but my flips flopped more and i actually scratched my nose with the back of my hand.
and then i realized it. it was the ice cream. far from the true tangy creaminess that is authentic-tasting strawberry ice cream, this carvel pink palooza was… fake. it was … sugary. it tasted like… pink.
it was like running crookedly down cobbled streets. like holding my cousin’s hand the friend way, not the love way (cupped, not laced). it was like hot pebbles on your feet and belly-flopping into a wave. it was like the smell of old relatives homes, the papery fineness of their hands as they held my bronzed cheeks, marveled at my eyes, and called me koukla mou. it was like sitting in my dad’s lap and having him teach me all the letters.
it was crazy mountain roads with my goddess of a mother in the driver’s seat, yelling competent insults at greek drivers and inventing games for me. it was the way she took care of everything and sometimes turned her eyes when i sucked on sugar cubes before lunch. it was quince jelly, keftedes, and volvic. it was my first bee sting, sunscreen making my cotton dress stick to my butt and gluing my legs to the car seat, it was only ordering french fries through half of crete.
it was cocking my head on video cassette to explain yet another ancient temple. it was pointing out which field best suited a reentactment of persephone’s snatching, and then reenacting it. it was taunting poseidon to send bigger waves, listening to an echo bounce at epidaurus, asking the oracle at delphi, tracking the minotaur at knossos. it was scratched knees and jelly bracelets and a polka dot bikini and a lifelong fear of jellyfish.
it was believing that if you yelled “OREGANO!” just loud enough off a mountain, the wind would blow faster. it was that kind of magic.
move over, petit madeleines. take your riviera, marcel. this was pink. this was ice cream. this was greece. this was summer.
this was childhood.