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Snow is flying here in central Indiana, which, strangely enough, makes me think of ice cream. Well, maybe it isn’t so strange, since ice cream is one of my favorite things. I especially love soft serve twist cones, the ones that are half chocolate and half vanilla.

I love the way the creamy sweetness melts on your tongue, coating it in cool yumminess.  Sometimes I like to lick around and around the outside, catching the little drips just before they spill over the cone. Sometimes I can’t be that patient and I take a big bite out of the top (which invariably gives me a hammerhead).

I think life is like that cone. Sometimes we want to lick it slowly and make it last, and sometimes we want to jump in and take a big bite.

I want to savor every moment of my daughters’ lives, to enjoy every choir concert and college break and movie snuggled under a blanket. I want to slow down those moments when we sit by the fire and don’t say anything because we just enjoy each other’s company, and the noisy dinners where everyone is talking about their day. At those times, I want to just lick the cone of life a little at a time and make it last forever.

But when it comes to my mother, I can’t be satisfied with a lick. I adore my mom and I think she likes me a little bit, too (!). But I know that she’s getting older every year and, like an ice cream cone in summer, I can’t keep her forever no matter how I wish it were otherwise. So I want to take big selfish bites of the time I have with her so I can savor them long after the she’s gone. I hope that someday my girls will look at time with me in the same way.

So, are you a licker or a biter? Or, like me, are you a little bit of both?