Free Range

When you’re a beginner ice cream maker — we got a machine this month — you can spend a lot of time thinking about what makes ice cream quintessentially ice-creamy. Is it the flavor? the sweetness? the milky-mouthfeel? Whatever it is, the Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream I made this past weekend had it in spades. (I think it’s all about texture.)

It doesn’t take that much to get my (almost) two-year-old son excited, but this created something beyond excitement. He literally jumped up and down and squealed when he saw this ice cream coming to the table.

Before beginning the fairly lengthy process of making it, I wondered whether it was, perhaps, too exotic. After all, its very name contained both salt and caramel, and the recipe called for fleur de sel. Would its salty-sweetness be too much? Would it alienate the ice cream traditionalists in the family? In a word, no. It was transcendent, and beautiful. And now it’s all gone.

(Recipe is at the link above. Heck, I’ll link again. It was that good.)

I don’t know about you, but I want more from life than simple survival — no matter how long my life lasts. A New York Times column today got me thinking along these lines. The gist: most of us are going to end up in nursing homes, sooner or later, and the next few years will see the baby boomers reaching the age of institutionalization. Unfortunately, nursing homes are pretty grim places. My grandmother and my aunt both spent their last days in hospital-like facilities that reeked of urine.

Perhaps, as in so many things, the sheer size of the baby boom cohort will be enough to change things for generations to come. Life in a nursing home is not a pleasant thing to dwell upon. “I hope I die before I get old” is still a common sentiment, even if the age of “oldness” retreats further and further. But think about it we should, or many of us will soon be facing a life of cafeteria meals, bingo nights and proscribed bedtimes, simply because there are few other options.

There’s reason for hope, though, as a few pioneers work to create a place for us to die that’s also a place worth living in. It’s heartening, especially at a time when my own father’s aging, and accompanying health problems, weigh on my mind.

Right now, he’s in his own home, with his pets, and his land, and his collection of hunting trophies proudly displayed on every horizonal and vertical surface. He’s able to live in his own ornery way. And he’s relatively happy. (Not so happy as if his grandchildren lived nearby, but that’s another story.) But if you take away that freedom, how much of his soul, and his will to live, will remain?

When I drag Callum forcibly out of the bathtub, and towel him off as I lift him into his bedroom, I’m struck by his sheer joy at being completely naked. He sometimes giggles as the fresh air hits his feet after he’s taken off his shoes, and the naked Callum represents that same shoeless sentiment, but with a full-body intensity. He runs around the room, and laughs, and unashamedly climbs up onto my back as I sit on the floor, flipping up over my head and onto the floor again. The ultimate embodiment of his comfort in his own skin, however, is when he grabs his toy hammer and strikes a pose, curling his bicep as he grasps the plastic handle, staring at himself in the mirror, his face half-smile and half-tough-guy sneer. Often, there’s even a little growl to accompany this naked show of boyish strength. I can only imagine this kid as a teenager. May he remain so joyous in his love for his own body.