Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Eating Ice Cream

Say what you want but there are few things better than eating ice cream with your daughters on a hot summer day.

A snow cone or frozen lemonade works too.

After lunch is best.

And after swimming if you can make it work is even better.

The car is humid and hot.

The towels are damp from wet hair and they smell of chlorine.

A blowing AC makes everyone too cold on the car ride, but the cold air of the ice cream shop hits you as a wall of fresh welcome air when you open the door.

Everyone eats in near silence, already tired from swimming.

And by the time everyone is ready to go you have goosebumps.

The sun feels good on your skin on the short walk back to the car.

You know the summer is going by too fast, but so is everything else.

If Writers Feel The Same

I wonder if writers feel the same way.

Maybe you feel like an imposter – until one day you don’t.

Maybe you always feel like a bit of a fake.

Understand: Quitting is the easiest part.

Many nights have passed and many miles have been traveled between the circus tent and the Muffathalle, and thousands of dirty clubs and late shows, bone-rattling buses and grimy motels, and dressing rooms that smelled of piss and cigarettes. There have been nights of sitting backstage and staring at a face in the mirror exhausted to the point of being unrecognizable, and endless airport hallways I’ve walked at dawn, with a paper cup of milky lukewarm tea and a painful sense of longing for home. There have been audiences who were curious, restrained, drunk, ebullient, resentful, respectful, there to defend my dad’s honor or to try to catch a glimpse of him in my voice or face, or almost entirely absent. But through all of it, I worked hard, I paid attention, I sang to the six percent even if only two percent showed up on a given night, I sang to become better, I sang for the band if no one else was listening, I just kept doing it until it felt like home.

– Rosanne Cash, Composed (Amazon)

Sterling Terrell