Did you ever wonder why young children do not really understand the concept of beauty? The answer is very simple really. You see, in comparison, the aborigines of Australia don’t understand it when people ask them about their religion, because to them, everything is religion. To the child, everything is beauty. That is why I used to love car rides.

Every Wednesday, after I got home from school, and after I did my home work, my mom and I would drive out of our comfortable suburban neighborhood, down Hutchinson road, and into the Corner plaza to get some ice cream. Why every Wednesday? The answer is simple, you see Wednesdays are in the middle of the school week. The day when all of the stress from Monday and Tuesday weigh down on your shoulders like a third grade bully at recess, and the thought of the two more days until the weekend leaves you disheartened and tired. That is where ice cream comes in.

Car rides are always a sensory explosion of beauty. The trees have chocolate bark and peppermint leaves. There are giant rainbow colored swirl lollipops coming out of the bushes. Every one is smiling and happy. There is this huge world out there and I get to discover all of the beauty that it has to offer. The beginning of my voyage is ice cream. Frozen sugar coated love, a million trillion flavors of happiness to offer, but one stands out above the rest. Placed on a solid gold pedestal embedded with diamonds, rubies, and gobstoppers I approach it, yes, yes, cookies and cream.

Cookies and cream ice cream is as close to God as my little mind could comprehend. The cold, wet, delicious vanilla ice cream causes my tongue to do backflips in my mouth. The crunchy chocolate cookies are an absolute perfect contrast to the vanilla. Together, the two opposites, both of which are not great by themselves, combine to make an incredible combination of godliness.

My childhood was, in retrospect, very happy. The ice cream could have had something to do with it, but my mother definitely did. I loved my mother; she was so warm and comforting. Whenever any outside modifier would attempt to shatter my fragile innocence my mother would take the blow for me. We would laugh together, learn together, and cry together. Sometimes Dara Fischer, a cute blonde girl that sat to the left of me in my second grade class, would ask me about my dad. I didn’t really know about him, but sometimes when my mom was relaxing on our couch she would tell me stories. “You see Dara, my dad is a great man. First, he was a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, then he flew a fighter jet in the Vietnam war, after that he came back to the United States where he works as a secret government agent killing the bad and keeping all of us safe to live in happiness.” “Gee… That’s…uh…nice.” I was never good at catching sarcasm. This was the truth to me so, as a child, my mind just couldn’t fathom anyone not believing me.

When I turned 14 years old a change happened. The adolescent changes that happen at that time were not quite as important as the drastic change my world underwent. The chocolate covered trees turned into dirty, disease infested, rotting biomass. The peppermint leaves stopped tasting like peppermint and more like rusted, used razor blades found in a 86 year old mans bathroom trash can. My limitless imagination where I was the creator of its reality was shattered by three words. “Honey I’m sick.” So my mom has a cold. Of course she wasn’t talking about a small infection. My mother had cancer. She was going to die.

The remainder of my year was spent caring after my dear beloved mother. This was, of course, not an easy job for a fourteen-year-old boy. My days of imagining the bright and amazing future were over. My time was now filled with cleaning the house, mowing the lawn. Walking to the store to buy groceries, cooking, feeding my mother, and giving her medication. Needless to say, I had no time for my school. It was my job to return the love that my mother gave to me so selflessly. The worst part of all was the sitting. Hours turned into days then to weeks and months, of sitting and watching my beautiful mother waste away to the level of a helpless babe.

A feeling was growing inside me. Similar to my mother’s cancer, hatred was steaming inside my body. Just as the cancer literally at away at my mother the hatred boiled and churned inside me. It destroyed my soul, my heart, and my mind. There were only two powers in my reality. Two opposites, that together, were combined to make me. My mother and my hate. The hatred focused on my father like a laser beam. Where was he? Who is he? My mothers soothing stories of the hero are now so false, so distant. Why, if he was such an outstanding person, would he let all of this happen? Why?

The funeral was bullshit, you will have to have pardon my language, but it was bullshit. Out of twenty people attending eighteen of them were friends of my mother. The ladies were dressed in long, plain, black dresses and the men were dressed in black three-piece suits. One Jesuit priest was there, Father Corolla, and one social worker. I was alone in the front row, a storm cloud as dark as my heart hung over my head. After the service the social worker, Mrs. Burnheart, approached me. She expressed her sympathy for my situation and quickly put me into her van. I ran away. As I sat in the van my mind, now overwhelmed with hatred ran away, far away from the hardships of reality. I never noticed the car ride to the “Special Hospital.”

The next twenty years went by as quickly as a human second does to God’s perception. There was only pain and confusion in my life. Then the realization that I have to accomplish, my only purpose. I need to do away with my hate, I had to get out of this place. I played a role, a Oscar winning role of a sane human. I took advantage of the psychologist’s sympathies for my unusual circumstances, and was soon released. I was given twenty thousand dollars that my mother left me and I began my quest. I needed to find my father. The only way to do away with the pain and confusion is to do away him. Sifting through old records and papers I came up with a name, an evil, evil name. Two thousand dollars and two weeks later a private investigator found where my father worked. Tonight is cold and windy, storm clouds cover the sky blocking the moon. It’s dark, oh so dark. I slowly walk through the doors where my father works. Time is slowing down to the point of insanity. I notice an old man with a nametag that matches my father’s name. My sweaty hand tightly grips my nine-millimeter Beretta in my pocket. He spoke, “Can I help you sir?” Yes, two scoops of cookies and cream please.