Ice Age
We buy Frankie and Lola ice creams from the kiosk in the park, then walk through the Pohutakawas to the beach. We sit on striped towels and watch as the kids dance into the water, unable to temper their joy at the sea with their love of ice cream.
I slide my tongue over frozen slopes, my mind too busy to acknowledge the flavour. I watch as Lola passionately kisses her ice cream, plunging her peachy face into its tempting depths. A wave smashes her little legs. She throws her arms out and her precious orb of strawberry swirl topples off the cone and into the sea.
A chance act of nature. That’s how I thought our babies would be made. Just a bunch of cells that might casually change our lives, or wash away unnoticed with the next tide.
In the end, they were made with precision. Timings, temperatures, and tests. More than embryos, they were artisan parcels of hope.
Two of them now twirl before us under the vast sky.
Two of them are on ice.
I reach for Dean’s hand.
“I keep thinking about that letter.” Dean savours his last mouthful of hokey pokey. He always makes his treats last. “It seems crazy to pay a storage fee when we’re never going to use them. Do we bury them with some kind of ceremony? Do we donate them to somebody else?”
Lola tries to fish her ice cream out of the sea. It dissolves between her fingers and she howls as though her heart’s broken.
“Leave them in the freezer,” Dean says. “Then after the next war or plague they’ll help repopulate the earth.” He waves the kids over for another lashing of sunscreen. They run towards us, shimmering with saltwater. “The storage fee’s nothing.”
This story was first published by Potroast, 2014.
I slide my tongue over frozen slopes, my mind too busy to acknowledge the flavour. I watch as Lola passionately kisses her ice cream, plunging her peachy face into its tempting depths. A wave smashes her little legs. She throws her arms out and her precious orb of strawberry swirl topples off the cone and into the sea.
A chance act of nature. That’s how I thought our babies would be made. Just a bunch of cells that might casually change our lives, or wash away unnoticed with the next tide.
In the end, they were made with precision. Timings, temperatures, and tests. More than embryos, they were artisan parcels of hope.
Two of them now twirl before us under the vast sky.
Two of them are on ice.
I reach for Dean’s hand.
“I keep thinking about that letter.” Dean savours his last mouthful of hokey pokey. He always makes his treats last. “It seems crazy to pay a storage fee when we’re never going to use them. Do we bury them with some kind of ceremony? Do we donate them to somebody else?”
Lola tries to fish her ice cream out of the sea. It dissolves between her fingers and she howls as though her heart’s broken.
“Leave them in the freezer,” Dean says. “Then after the next war or plague they’ll help repopulate the earth.” He waves the kids over for another lashing of sunscreen. They run towards us, shimmering with saltwater. “The storage fee’s nothing.”
This story was first published by Potroast, 2014.