It’s chocolate ice cream. My son is licking it. Sometimes this process becomes too slow for his pleasure, and then he takes a bite and makes a face that, again, is entirely unaware of the painful bliss of that frozen fragment filling his hot mouth. It’s a very lovely mouth. I look hard at my son, but he’s used to my soppy, love-filled gaze. He doesn’t look at me, and doesn’t mind being observed in this intimate act, which is both vital and delicate: and he continues to lick his ice cream with his probing red tongue.

In two vignettes, a mother delights in her son’s joy and remembers her own childhood.