The thing that immediately came to my mind when I read the prompt was going for a long drive in the car. My parents were happily married for a while I guess but it was the horrible fighting I remember. My dad and mom both worked hard to support their 6 kids but my dad had a stressful job at times, so maybe that’s why he started drinking so much. He would come home drunk and with a bad temper. He would beat up my mom and sometimes he would beat us three older kids, if we spoke up to help Mom. But things were great on Sundays. We did not go to church, we went for long drives and everyone was happy. We didn’t stop to eat much because of the cost but when we got home, Mom magically produced a pot roast or fried chicken. There usually was a cobbler for dessert or pie. But it was those wonderful drives I still love to do. Since I got my drivers license so long ago, when I was worried or stressed out about something, I went for a drive. My kids are grown with kids of their own and this grandma still loves to go for a drive in the countryside. If my husband doesn’t want to go, I go alone.
I love a drive and we did one most Sundays. My parents loved to wander our beautiful Irish countryside and always the stop in for tea and cake somewhere
Seventy years ago I awoke early one Summer’s morning, wandered out of the family house, quietly walked over to the nearby lake, and received a gift I still hold very dear: the lake was very still, ever so quiet, and a mist hung a few inches above the water’s surface. In that moment my six year old world was serenely peaceful, whole, and complete. I had been introduced to Nature’s loving embrace. My inner world and outer world unified. Nature birthed me. This taste of oneness and peacefulness still sings to me of a deeper lullaby, a state of mind and being, a possibility, yes, a possibility. Best, David🏮
I dream, long for, am sometimes haunted by the memories of my first, real love. He awoke in me, a longing for more, always more. He crushed my heart, put it back together, countless times, and he still lives in it. But, he lives there with me at 19 and him at 21. We are not those people anymore. But, the love, the longing, the tragic tears, the angst, the ecstasy are all still mine.
How I love what you wrote that "the love, the longing, the ecstasy are all still mine" - there's such rich recompense in that - so potent and so beautiful. It will always be yours.
I could not sleep and saw this set of entries on my phone in the middle of the night here in the dark winds of Southern Oregon .
This concept of taking up space is a very interesting one, especially for women .
I was a tall child, but I’m a short woman . I got my period very early and never got that big growth spurt that everyone else did in puberty.
So as a child, I was not treated as a little, short, cute girl.
My dad was a teacher . He grew up in poverty during depression in the 1930s in Brooklyn. His father was a trolley car driver, only had a six grade education, but had a heart of gold. Before they were social services, if your husband died, children often went to an orphanage. My grandfather helped house a couple of his sister-in-laws, and their children in those times.
He encouraged my dad to value education, the ticket out .
My dad from the time I was a very little girl told me I was smart enough to go to college and to do whatever I wanted to do .
So it was a mixed message society saying don’t take up too much space girly, and my mom and my dad saying go for it !
So I might still be short on the outside, not quite 5 foot two , I am very tall on the inside. ( Most days! )
This idea of space and how much of it we take up , as females, is very interesting .
How much space do we take up …? On the physical plane ? social -emotional plane? On a powerful plane-personally or politically?
Many questions to ponder and layers to further pursue here!
Thank you for the provocative prompt!
Thanks also for the incredible show, “The alchemy of Blood”
My dad was about 5’3’ but 6’ in my mind. A great leader and encouraged us all not to set limits on our selves (got me in trouble,sometimes!!). I enjoyed your story.
I am nostalgic for the walk from my attached home to the frong gate and and walkway. When I moved in it was a shared space and then one owner claimed the land and now it is embroiled in a lawsuit and appeal. The walkway has no relation to me it is as if I live in someones backyard with kitsch, wire barriers and dead bushes and empty bird feeders. Now it is so heavily planted that plants are planted in established plantings which will kill the originals.. I have no say and live in walk by what would be compared to an Authoritarian passyyage without franchise.. I am nostalgic for the former time when the space was collective and for now and maybe forever it rests in memory.. greed ran amuck.
I am getting ready for church but I thought I'd quickly read this piece because as a fat woman, I appreciate words of solidarity about taking up space in a fat phobic, misogynist world. But when Nadia Bolz-Weber says that she "tipped the scales at 230 lbs." after giving birth, I went cold. I have weighed 230 lbs. as a child-free, short fat woman many times in my life. We all know that "tipped the scales" is a deragatory term. Bolz-Weber's framing of her heaviest weight as being admissable because she just gave birth is a tell: when she can talk about having a big body in a way that doesn't denigrate fat women, I'll be more interested in what she has to say. This was a disappointment.
Victoria, l feel you are brave in sharing you own truth just as Nadia is brave for sharing hers. We carry simple and very complicated burdens and joys that are thrust upon us, just because we are humans evolving. Thank god we do come with abilities to strengthen our stretching souls with as much grace as our experiences will allow. I think we are all so brave, so fragile and far more beautiful than we in our human forms can fathom. I've spent a lot of time working in hospice and with older adults with dementia. One thing I tried to do was meet to people right where they were. No expectations. The other day while listening to a podcast James Finley said "God meets us where we are". Hearing that moved me to tears as it reminded me that we are never alone. And as crazy hard as it may be to accept right now, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be...until I'm guided elsewhere. 😊 Blessings to you.
I was surprised when she wrote that as I am guessing she is 6 ft or more and all I imagined was her statuesque frame. It didn’t fit the rest of the story .
I love ❤️ these connections to vulnerable women who craft connections despite my inability to be so eloquent. I’ve used @Suleika’s treatise for journaling pasted into the front of little 4x6-inch lined booklets I give to participants who come to women’s groups to which I belong & am asked to give a program. In Suleika’s words, “I reach for the page like I reach for a prayer: to plead, to confess, to remember that all is not chaos, all is not lost.” This morning I journaled for the 562nd day because Suleika encouraged me to see that my thoughts & ideas & expressing them have purpose & value to start each day believing that I matter, even if only to myself!
Joni Mitchell's lyric comes to mind: "I cant go back there anymore--y'know my key wont fit the door"...Going back not an option--nostalgia morphs into a prompt to let go. The old dutch barn of my childhood torn down and sold for parts, the field where I rode my horse now a Walmart. In my hometown---and in NYC for that matter-- I fall into "this used to be that" and so as not to be an insufferable sad sack I venture out into the world to engage the now and discover. (6' tall here)
My tallness is the same as my dad. That's why i'm the ladder at home when my mom needs sth from upper shelves, no matter where they are. Beside my tallness, i'm facially and behaviorally like him, too.
This prompt, from Nadia and from Elaine, is acutely resonant with me right now - thank you :) Suleika, I hope that your body is treating you with care this week.
When I was 8 (or so), my parents began taking us on nuclear family-only vacations. As in, we still visited the grandparents and the joined cousins at the summer cabin, but my parents were able to set aside some budget for a week in a damp rented cabinet on Cape Cod for Just Us. New England summers are wonderfully unpredictable: the beach is glorious but the chance of rain is omnipresent, and hence, shopping, books and board games. A favorite outing for my mother was antique stores. She loved hunting for new furniture and great deals, but with three girls in tow she knew she had to give us a manageable motive as well. This came in the form of silver collectible teaspoons and tiny glass figurines. She bought us each an old typeset drawer to hang on our bedroom wall and fill with small glass animals (they were always animals); the chambers for the old letter stamps used back in the day were just the right size. As this caught on, my dad would look for tiny carved animals on his occasional work trips - a jade grizzly from Alaska, or an artisanal cat from a colleague in China. My grandmother would send the clay pigment-colored animals that came in a box of Rose’s tea in the 1990s (I think). Eventually we filled up our typeset drawer and perched new animals on the tippy-top, along windowsills, and on bathroom vanities. Eventually, we packed them up in yet another move and didn’t unpack them in the next home. Eventually, our divorced parents didn’t dedicate bedrooms for us to paint and fill with the things that describe the full arc of our lives. They ask us at the holidays to check just once more for the things we own that still lurk in their garages, and set a date to take them back. We dodge the question, pointing to our month-to-month leases and stacked shelves of ‘what-ifs’ hovering over our notions of home. But we don’t, and won’t let anyone, discard the boxes marked “glass animals.” Tiny baubles are not easy to protect in lives allergic - by nature or by requirement - to clutter, but each of us defends our dusty boxes year after year. Even though we haven’t looked at them in years we see them clearly in our memory, as we see the places we got them, the role they served in our early play, and even the way the after-school light could catch on them. Holding on to these tiny, compact sources of delight, these rewards of an afternoon errand-turned-treasure hunt, is a way of holding on to essential chapters of our simpler selves learning how to take up space.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine, for today's essays, prompt, and inspiration. Suleika, I finally (and fortunately) made it to The Alchemy of Blood last week, right under the wire. Thank you, to you and your mom, for sharing this beautiful and deeply moving art with all of us. And for teaching us. You, Suleika, are a fabulous teacher.
Today's prompt response:
I know I’m not alone when I say certain smells immediately take me back, evoking a sudden thoughtfulness about days long ago. Right now, leaves are falling from the many gorgeous trees in my backyard, and the signature smell of brown, yellow, burnt orange leaves, shed from red oak, maple, tulip poplar, jolts me right back to my five-year-old self. I’m rolling around in raked up piles with my next door neighbor, fellow kindergartener Emily. We pile them high and jump in them, over and over again, burying each other in crinkly, crunchy autumn bliss, breathing deeply, the smell of dead leaves. We laugh as we play, sometimes hiding from our brothers, completely covered in mountains of crisp leaves, and hushing each other as we try not to move. And then someone giggles, probably me, and we are found.
I still love the scents of autumn- and I often light candles to warm my space and indulge my senses- earthy, sweet, musky smells, of leaf piles, apples, and spice, transporting me back to my child’s play and those times when we were hiding, breathing in the dead leaves as they covered our faces, just for fun.
Totally relate to making myself small. Very interesting to consider how this mindset grew in me.(middle child) My sisters probably would not “get” this concept
at all!
Good fodder for my journal! Thanks Elaine and Nadia.
I know I am not alone when I share that I have terrible body image issues. I am 30 lbs overweight and the prompt “taking up space” immediately makes me look at my appearance.
I’ve read stories of being tall, being short, or suppressing passions and desires as not to be noticed. But, my mind immediately goes to my width; my roundness.
I’m short, 5’3”…that never bothered me, likely because no one ever made me feel bad about it. Having vacillated between 5 to 45lbs overweight, I’ve heard countless comments.
I can remember walking into a store one time and a STRANGER…a man I had never seen or met before, say “you’d be hot if it weren’t for that fat ass”
Taking up space immediately makes me think about my weight; my unattractiveness and unworthiness.
I try to accept myself as is. I give thanks for all the things my body has done. But, I honestly can’t imagine a time in my life, even when I was most fit, that I wasn’t thinking about how much space my body took up.
At 5 feet 9 inches (I've lost 1/2 an inch over the past several decades!), - I am the only one in my family to not make it to 6 feet. My three nephews are between 6'4 and 6'8. While they've never complained about their height, they've hit their heads many a time on low clearances, and either suffered being in too small spaces (seats in airplanes, theaters with little leg room), or paid extra for more space. When looking for a new home a few years ago, I had to reject a place where I knew my nephews would never be able to stand up straight. I know that for my mother and sister, dating presented a conundrum as neither would date men that were shorter.
On this week's prompt.... I recall coming home from school, and looking into the bread box for a freshly baked treat. My mom baked almost daily, and she was a passionate artist when it came to flour, sugar and leavening. She was Queen of the Bar Cookies. Brownies, congo bars, apple squares, raspberry and lemon bars.... oh I could go on and on. I think the best part for her, was the delight we all took in her creations.
There is a comforting place in Ann Arbor: the Washtenaw Dairy. It is a corner market that sells groceries, doughnuts and ice cream. When I was young, we went ice skating every Sunday afternoon, followed by a cone. My aunt, who I cared for, liked to the same flavor every time: butter pecan. Now, I go late Friday afternoon, when I am finished working. A generous scoop in a waffle cone is $4 and I tell the counter kids to keep the change from a five. I chat with Mary, the owner, and watch the cross section of people from every age and background. Tiny tots, like I once was. Bigger kids, parents, elders. All connected by ice cream.
I let my mind wander after reading all your comments. And was taken to our living room in our childhood home in Ireland. Sunday nights, watching a movie with my parents - only 2 TV channels, so you had to hope it was good. The fire roaring, tea, and whatever great item my sister would have quickly magic’ed up - cinnamon buns, scones, an apple tart.
The thing that immediately came to my mind when I read the prompt was going for a long drive in the car. My parents were happily married for a while I guess but it was the horrible fighting I remember. My dad and mom both worked hard to support their 6 kids but my dad had a stressful job at times, so maybe that’s why he started drinking so much. He would come home drunk and with a bad temper. He would beat up my mom and sometimes he would beat us three older kids, if we spoke up to help Mom. But things were great on Sundays. We did not go to church, we went for long drives and everyone was happy. We didn’t stop to eat much because of the cost but when we got home, Mom magically produced a pot roast or fried chicken. There usually was a cobbler for dessert or pie. But it was those wonderful drives I still love to do. Since I got my drivers license so long ago, when I was worried or stressed out about something, I went for a drive. My kids are grown with kids of their own and this grandma still loves to go for a drive in the countryside. If my husband doesn’t want to go, I go alone.
This conjures up scenes from my childhood too - funny how these customs stay with us - thank you.
I love a drive and we did one most Sundays. My parents loved to wander our beautiful Irish countryside and always the stop in for tea and cake somewhere
Seventy years ago I awoke early one Summer’s morning, wandered out of the family house, quietly walked over to the nearby lake, and received a gift I still hold very dear: the lake was very still, ever so quiet, and a mist hung a few inches above the water’s surface. In that moment my six year old world was serenely peaceful, whole, and complete. I had been introduced to Nature’s loving embrace. My inner world and outer world unified. Nature birthed me. This taste of oneness and peacefulness still sings to me of a deeper lullaby, a state of mind and being, a possibility, yes, a possibility. Best, David🏮
Love this. Those magical moments with nature. Reminds me of the absolute joy of hiking over four days to Machu Picchu, the sights we saw
This is so lovely. I feel as if I can inhale mother nature's aroma from your poetic words.
I dream, long for, am sometimes haunted by the memories of my first, real love. He awoke in me, a longing for more, always more. He crushed my heart, put it back together, countless times, and he still lives in it. But, he lives there with me at 19 and him at 21. We are not those people anymore. But, the love, the longing, the tragic tears, the angst, the ecstasy are all still mine.
The gift of an intense first love. ❤️
How I love what you wrote that "the love, the longing, the ecstasy are all still mine" - there's such rich recompense in that - so potent and so beautiful. It will always be yours.
Hello Suleika and friends,
I could not sleep and saw this set of entries on my phone in the middle of the night here in the dark winds of Southern Oregon .
This concept of taking up space is a very interesting one, especially for women .
I was a tall child, but I’m a short woman . I got my period very early and never got that big growth spurt that everyone else did in puberty.
So as a child, I was not treated as a little, short, cute girl.
My dad was a teacher . He grew up in poverty during depression in the 1930s in Brooklyn. His father was a trolley car driver, only had a six grade education, but had a heart of gold. Before they were social services, if your husband died, children often went to an orphanage. My grandfather helped house a couple of his sister-in-laws, and their children in those times.
He encouraged my dad to value education, the ticket out .
My dad from the time I was a very little girl told me I was smart enough to go to college and to do whatever I wanted to do .
So it was a mixed message society saying don’t take up too much space girly, and my mom and my dad saying go for it !
So I might still be short on the outside, not quite 5 foot two , I am very tall on the inside. ( Most days! )
This idea of space and how much of it we take up , as females, is very interesting .
How much space do we take up …? On the physical plane ? social -emotional plane? On a powerful plane-personally or politically?
Many questions to ponder and layers to further pursue here!
Thank you for the provocative prompt!
Thanks also for the incredible show, “The alchemy of Blood”
My dad was about 5’3’ but 6’ in my mind. A great leader and encouraged us all not to set limits on our selves (got me in trouble,sometimes!!). I enjoyed your story.
I am nostalgic for the walk from my attached home to the frong gate and and walkway. When I moved in it was a shared space and then one owner claimed the land and now it is embroiled in a lawsuit and appeal. The walkway has no relation to me it is as if I live in someones backyard with kitsch, wire barriers and dead bushes and empty bird feeders. Now it is so heavily planted that plants are planted in established plantings which will kill the originals.. I have no say and live in walk by what would be compared to an Authoritarian passyyage without franchise.. I am nostalgic for the former time when the space was collective and for now and maybe forever it rests in memory.. greed ran amuck.
I feel this for you
I am getting ready for church but I thought I'd quickly read this piece because as a fat woman, I appreciate words of solidarity about taking up space in a fat phobic, misogynist world. But when Nadia Bolz-Weber says that she "tipped the scales at 230 lbs." after giving birth, I went cold. I have weighed 230 lbs. as a child-free, short fat woman many times in my life. We all know that "tipped the scales" is a deragatory term. Bolz-Weber's framing of her heaviest weight as being admissable because she just gave birth is a tell: when she can talk about having a big body in a way that doesn't denigrate fat women, I'll be more interested in what she has to say. This was a disappointment.
Victoria, l feel you are brave in sharing you own truth just as Nadia is brave for sharing hers. We carry simple and very complicated burdens and joys that are thrust upon us, just because we are humans evolving. Thank god we do come with abilities to strengthen our stretching souls with as much grace as our experiences will allow. I think we are all so brave, so fragile and far more beautiful than we in our human forms can fathom. I've spent a lot of time working in hospice and with older adults with dementia. One thing I tried to do was meet to people right where they were. No expectations. The other day while listening to a podcast James Finley said "God meets us where we are". Hearing that moved me to tears as it reminded me that we are never alone. And as crazy hard as it may be to accept right now, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be...until I'm guided elsewhere. 😊 Blessings to you.
There is no distance between us. ❤
I was surprised when she wrote that as I am guessing she is 6 ft or more and all I imagined was her statuesque frame. It didn’t fit the rest of the story .
oops, *derogatory.*
I love ❤️ these connections to vulnerable women who craft connections despite my inability to be so eloquent. I’ve used @Suleika’s treatise for journaling pasted into the front of little 4x6-inch lined booklets I give to participants who come to women’s groups to which I belong & am asked to give a program. In Suleika’s words, “I reach for the page like I reach for a prayer: to plead, to confess, to remember that all is not chaos, all is not lost.” This morning I journaled for the 562nd day because Suleika encouraged me to see that my thoughts & ideas & expressing them have purpose & value to start each day believing that I matter, even if only to myself!
Joni Mitchell's lyric comes to mind: "I cant go back there anymore--y'know my key wont fit the door"...Going back not an option--nostalgia morphs into a prompt to let go. The old dutch barn of my childhood torn down and sold for parts, the field where I rode my horse now a Walmart. In my hometown---and in NYC for that matter-- I fall into "this used to be that" and so as not to be an insufferable sad sack I venture out into the world to engage the now and discover. (6' tall here)
My tallness is the same as my dad. That's why i'm the ladder at home when my mom needs sth from upper shelves, no matter where they are. Beside my tallness, i'm facially and behaviorally like him, too.
This prompt, from Nadia and from Elaine, is acutely resonant with me right now - thank you :) Suleika, I hope that your body is treating you with care this week.
When I was 8 (or so), my parents began taking us on nuclear family-only vacations. As in, we still visited the grandparents and the joined cousins at the summer cabin, but my parents were able to set aside some budget for a week in a damp rented cabinet on Cape Cod for Just Us. New England summers are wonderfully unpredictable: the beach is glorious but the chance of rain is omnipresent, and hence, shopping, books and board games. A favorite outing for my mother was antique stores. She loved hunting for new furniture and great deals, but with three girls in tow she knew she had to give us a manageable motive as well. This came in the form of silver collectible teaspoons and tiny glass figurines. She bought us each an old typeset drawer to hang on our bedroom wall and fill with small glass animals (they were always animals); the chambers for the old letter stamps used back in the day were just the right size. As this caught on, my dad would look for tiny carved animals on his occasional work trips - a jade grizzly from Alaska, or an artisanal cat from a colleague in China. My grandmother would send the clay pigment-colored animals that came in a box of Rose’s tea in the 1990s (I think). Eventually we filled up our typeset drawer and perched new animals on the tippy-top, along windowsills, and on bathroom vanities. Eventually, we packed them up in yet another move and didn’t unpack them in the next home. Eventually, our divorced parents didn’t dedicate bedrooms for us to paint and fill with the things that describe the full arc of our lives. They ask us at the holidays to check just once more for the things we own that still lurk in their garages, and set a date to take them back. We dodge the question, pointing to our month-to-month leases and stacked shelves of ‘what-ifs’ hovering over our notions of home. But we don’t, and won’t let anyone, discard the boxes marked “glass animals.” Tiny baubles are not easy to protect in lives allergic - by nature or by requirement - to clutter, but each of us defends our dusty boxes year after year. Even though we haven’t looked at them in years we see them clearly in our memory, as we see the places we got them, the role they served in our early play, and even the way the after-school light could catch on them. Holding on to these tiny, compact sources of delight, these rewards of an afternoon errand-turned-treasure hunt, is a way of holding on to essential chapters of our simpler selves learning how to take up space.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine, for today's essays, prompt, and inspiration. Suleika, I finally (and fortunately) made it to The Alchemy of Blood last week, right under the wire. Thank you, to you and your mom, for sharing this beautiful and deeply moving art with all of us. And for teaching us. You, Suleika, are a fabulous teacher.
Today's prompt response:
I know I’m not alone when I say certain smells immediately take me back, evoking a sudden thoughtfulness about days long ago. Right now, leaves are falling from the many gorgeous trees in my backyard, and the signature smell of brown, yellow, burnt orange leaves, shed from red oak, maple, tulip poplar, jolts me right back to my five-year-old self. I’m rolling around in raked up piles with my next door neighbor, fellow kindergartener Emily. We pile them high and jump in them, over and over again, burying each other in crinkly, crunchy autumn bliss, breathing deeply, the smell of dead leaves. We laugh as we play, sometimes hiding from our brothers, completely covered in mountains of crisp leaves, and hushing each other as we try not to move. And then someone giggles, probably me, and we are found.
I still love the scents of autumn- and I often light candles to warm my space and indulge my senses- earthy, sweet, musky smells, of leaf piles, apples, and spice, transporting me back to my child’s play and those times when we were hiding, breathing in the dead leaves as they covered our faces, just for fun.
Totally relate to making myself small. Very interesting to consider how this mindset grew in me.(middle child) My sisters probably would not “get” this concept
at all!
Good fodder for my journal! Thanks Elaine and Nadia.
I know I am not alone when I share that I have terrible body image issues. I am 30 lbs overweight and the prompt “taking up space” immediately makes me look at my appearance.
I’ve read stories of being tall, being short, or suppressing passions and desires as not to be noticed. But, my mind immediately goes to my width; my roundness.
I’m short, 5’3”…that never bothered me, likely because no one ever made me feel bad about it. Having vacillated between 5 to 45lbs overweight, I’ve heard countless comments.
I can remember walking into a store one time and a STRANGER…a man I had never seen or met before, say “you’d be hot if it weren’t for that fat ass”
Taking up space immediately makes me think about my weight; my unattractiveness and unworthiness.
I try to accept myself as is. I give thanks for all the things my body has done. But, I honestly can’t imagine a time in my life, even when I was most fit, that I wasn’t thinking about how much space my body took up.
At 5 feet 9 inches (I've lost 1/2 an inch over the past several decades!), - I am the only one in my family to not make it to 6 feet. My three nephews are between 6'4 and 6'8. While they've never complained about their height, they've hit their heads many a time on low clearances, and either suffered being in too small spaces (seats in airplanes, theaters with little leg room), or paid extra for more space. When looking for a new home a few years ago, I had to reject a place where I knew my nephews would never be able to stand up straight. I know that for my mother and sister, dating presented a conundrum as neither would date men that were shorter.
On this week's prompt.... I recall coming home from school, and looking into the bread box for a freshly baked treat. My mom baked almost daily, and she was a passionate artist when it came to flour, sugar and leavening. She was Queen of the Bar Cookies. Brownies, congo bars, apple squares, raspberry and lemon bars.... oh I could go on and on. I think the best part for her, was the delight we all took in her creations.
There is a comforting place in Ann Arbor: the Washtenaw Dairy. It is a corner market that sells groceries, doughnuts and ice cream. When I was young, we went ice skating every Sunday afternoon, followed by a cone. My aunt, who I cared for, liked to the same flavor every time: butter pecan. Now, I go late Friday afternoon, when I am finished working. A generous scoop in a waffle cone is $4 and I tell the counter kids to keep the change from a five. I chat with Mary, the owner, and watch the cross section of people from every age and background. Tiny tots, like I once was. Bigger kids, parents, elders. All connected by ice cream.
I let my mind wander after reading all your comments. And was taken to our living room in our childhood home in Ireland. Sunday nights, watching a movie with my parents - only 2 TV channels, so you had to hope it was good. The fire roaring, tea, and whatever great item my sister would have quickly magic’ed up - cinnamon buns, scones, an apple tart.