Pistachio Ice Cream and A Weiner Dog
Having been adopted and coming from multiple broken homes, the shape of modern love is at times, not unlike trying to fit a round peg into a square hole for me. It’s been a journey along dark winding highways, trying to catch a glimpse of light that’s been broken by the trees. However, at times difficult the journey, through the simplicity and the concept, there has always been a precursor to my contemporary love life that I received early as a child, that has haphazardly guided me through the thicket of what I have grown to know as love. That precursor to my version of modern love, will forever have the flavor and shape of pistachio ice cream and a wiener dog.
Warm summer breezes would swirl in and across the bay named Kettle Creek, a tiny enclave of a larger bay by the name of Barnegat, where my grandparents owned a little craftsman-style bungalow that nestled right up against the waters edge like a lost puppy trying to steal a drink. Those same summer breezes would wind their way gently up our fishing lines creating precisely enough friction on the lines that our orange and white bobbers would bounce up and down ever so slightly on the water making my cousins, and I believe that a small snapper or sea robin might be nibbling at our bait just below the waters surface. The winds and the dancing bobbers would provide just enough of a distraction, that we as children would quickly forget just how humid and clammy a light August breeze could make everything feel. Learning to sweat like we did on those hot late summer days were a big part of our adolescence.
The waves of the bay would be pushed from the west by the heavy winds, and lap up against the charcoal grey colored bulkhead. Gently at times, and more violently at others, depending on the weather system that was on the other end of the gusts. No matter what their mood, the sound was always relaxing to my ears. Black tar would seep from the seams of the wood that made up the structure of the bulkhead that held the land from the sea, almost in the same way my best friend would stand between me and my early girlfriends. No matter, how rose colored the glass, always the tar seeped out, like glue from the binding of my favorite book.
Gretchen was the name of the small Weiner dog that used to drag itself across the two-by-four planks of the military grey dock that hovered precariously over the bay. My grandfather, a short stout strong German man, used to assure me that Gretchen was a German dachshund hound and I believed him because at the time there was no Google and I had no reference. My imagination helped me find the humor in Gretchen and my heart allowed that squatty sausage to become the precursor to my version of the flavor and shape of love. You see, only true love could allow my Grandfather, this short, stout, strong German man to feed Gretchen, this once tiny and frail German dachshund hound so much green pistachio ice cream, that her belly would drag across the two-by-four's as she waddled from the deck to the waters edge to bask in the sun like a pacific sea lion.