Like ice cream, we’re not meant to hold on to every perfect thing forever

There’s something sacred about a summer afternoon, a scoop of vanilla bean sliding down the edge of a sugar cone faster than you can lick it. Kids laugh through sticky fingers. Adults lean back in lawn chairs, pretending not to care as their own cones slowly collapse into gooey puddles. The sun beats down, cicadas hum and the moment is — if not perfect — at least fully alive.

Ice cream melts.

That’s the point.

We’re not meant to hold on to every perfect thing forever. Some of life’s best moments are the ones that don’t last — the impromptu laugh, the goodbye hug, the stillness of dusk after a hot day. They are meant to be savored, not preserved.

During the summer months — especially in August — our family would gather for picnics in a park in western Colorado. My mom and her sisters would bring hamburgers or hot dogs to grill on the old park barbecues, our dads in charge of lighting the charcoal and getting the flames just right.

And us kids?

We had the most important job of all: making the ice cream.

Not with a machine or a freezer, but the old-fashioned way — crank by crank, sweat on your brow, salt and ice clinking around the wooden tub. We’d take turns turning the handle of the hand-cranked ice cream maker. There was always one of us who’d sit on top of the ice cream maker to hold it steady while another turned the crank with both hands, usually. Gunny sacks were thrown over the top to sit on — coarse, scratchy and soaked through by the end.

The salty water would drain from the bottom of the ice cream maker, and it was the sitter’s job to keep refilling it with more ice and rock salt to keep the mixture cold. You could always tell who the sitters were by their wet bottoms — some wetter than others — wearing it like a badge of honor for a job well done. And, sometimes, that crank was a bit rusty from being used summer after summer, adding a squeaky soundtrack to our efforts.

We’d have contests to see who could crank the longest before giving up, muscles aching and fingers chilled. Eventually, when we were all too tired to keep going, one of our dads would step in to finish the job — strong, steady and smiling.

The mix was always prepared by the women — my mom, her sisters and my grandmother, who had all grown up on a dairy farm and knew exactly how to make it right. They used cream — not from a store, but always from Graff’s Dairy Farm. Last time I was home, I saw that Graff’s is still there. They mixed that cream with sugar and fresh fruit picked from the orchards that dotted the valley — peaches, apricots, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, even pears. Most of the fruit had been picked by our own hands, in exchange for a small fee to the orchard owners who sold it by the basket. We knew those orchards well. Many of us worked summer jobs in the nearby packing houses. I started as a box maker — sliding fruit boxes down a chute so the packers could do their job.

That ice cream wasn’t just cold and sweet. It tasted like home. Like sun-warmed skin and berry-stained fingers. Like aunts telling stories, uncles poking fun, and cousins running wild through the grass.

And every time it melted faster than we could eat it.

That’s the point.

The trick, I’ve learned, is not to hold tighter, but to appreciate more fully.

We live in a world obsessed with permanence. We freeze our food, save our texts, and back up our memories to the cloud. But there are no backups for the moment your daughter grabs your hand on the way to school. Or the last time your dad laughed at a joke only he thought was funny. Or the small act of kindness that someone else will never forget.

Those melt away, too.

And yet — there’s beauty in that. Just like that cone on a hot day, part of the joy is knowing it won’t last. It’s what makes it sweet.

Let the ice cream melt. Let the days pass. Let the kids get older. Let the garden bloom and fade. Let the memories come like waves and leave like the tide. You were there. You tasted it. You lived it.

Maybe that’s enough.

As summer winds down and we fold up the beach towels, I hope we’ll remember:

Life doesn’t have to be permanent to be beautiful. It just has to be noticed.

P.S. The crank is a little rusty now, and the cousins are all grown up. But every August, when the peaches ripen and the evenings stretch long and golden, I still remember. And I still smile.

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Richard Stride is the current CEO of Cascade Community Healthcare.