When I was a kid, every time I whined out or asked for something, which I undoubtedly never got, my mom would say, “yeah, well people in hell want ice water.”  Ah, the cliche, old and staid.  Yet if one has read Dante’s Inferno, shouldn’t people in hell want hot cocoa or a latte? I mean hell should be, well cold as hell — the furthest point from the sun.

This meandering thought led me to invariably  modernize the stuffy adage.  Now when my kids ask for something there is no WAY I am getting them or they plead for rest  when they have to walk more than 100 feet -“well I want a cappuccino and a cannoli, but I ain’t getting one.”  Parenthetically, I have been  to Mikes’s Pastry in Boston’s North End and ingested THE cappuccino and cannoli, but I’ve only been there twice  in my lifetime so the retort still stands (shhh – kids need not know).

I’ve been saying it for so long now that deliverance  from any hellish situation is followed by images of frothy caffeine cups and tubes of pastry cream sprinkled with chocolate chips floating by.   And I think my kids come to think of Eden as a patisserie or bakery with an Italian espresso machine.  I guess I am hoping that someday one of my ungrateful offspring will actually conjure up a steaming mug and present me with a sweet cylinder dotted with powdered sugar.  Until then it will be a cold day in hell, or would that be a hot day….