The Physics of Ice Cream
Musings on beach side ice cream and quantum physics.
Earlier this summer, we visited Aberystwyth, Wales—the town where Ivy will soon be starting school. It is not your typical vibrant college town. It is more of a seaside escape, less clubs and bars and more vacation and everyday life. It is definitely on the sleepier side, not the kind of place that goes all night.
One of the things I have noticed about British beach towns is that they all have a promenade. Instead of a noisy boardwalk—with neon lights, sideshows, corn dogs, and fried elephant ears—you have a wide, paved stretch. A boardwalk feels garishly American: loud and chaotic, all about spectacle. A promenade, on the other hand, feels unmistakably British: genteel, understated. Once it was where people paraded to be seen; now it is a place to meander, walk, sip coffee, and take it all in.
While the kids were off getting a pint, Amanda and I took Quinn and strolled along Aber’s promenade. You could hear the gulls overhead, sharp and insistent. The wind carried the scent of salt and fish. Signs for rentable beach huts popped up between weathered hotels that hadn’t kept up with the century; once opulent, now monuments to a different time.
At some point, I looked at Amanda and said, almost without thinking:
“You know, it’s a thing here to eat ice cream when you’re at the seaside. We should get some.”
She gave me that look, surprised, but not really, not after twenty-five years, and said:
“I was about to say the same thing.”
I laughed. “Further proof we’re quantumly entangled.”
So we found the nearest shop. I got a cone, Amanda got a cup. We parked ourselves on a bench near the water, sharing bites with Quinn, watching the waves, shooing away the seagulls, and feeling the wind.
I first heard about Quantum Entanglement earlier this year, driving somewhere with Amanda when she asked if I’d ever heard of the theory.
I have watched enough of The Big Bang Theory, Oppenheimer, and read enough science fiction to know that Quantum Physics is a massive and complex subject. It is dense, sometimes theoretical, abstract, and confusing. I had to admit I had never heard of Quantum Entanglement (For simplicity, let’s go with QE. My spell check might blow up if I keep trying to spell it). As Amanda started to explain what QE is, I imagined in my head a “sciency” psychic connection, one that sounded more like Star Trek than hard science. But it gave me pause.
The theory says that when two quantum particles become entangled, they form an inseparable bond. Whatever happens to one seems to instantly affect the other, whether they are side by side or galaxies apart. Despite all the math and theories trying to explain it, no one knows why it works. If the conditions are right, particles brush past each other or collide and explode into one another, and they are linked forever. It is like a scientific Vulcan mind-meld, a theoretical psychic connection that ignores space, time, and every rule we expect the universe to follow.
Amanda finished by explaining that she believes, with everything in her, that she and I are quantumly entangled. Being together for 25 years, the idea of two separate things staying linked no matter the distance, no matter what life throws at them, sounded comfortingly familiar.
Quantum entanglement, on the personal, human level, isn’t some kind of rom-com meet-cute. It’s not dramatic. This isn’t about meeting your soul-mate in a random coffee shop. It’s two things touching and the universe quietly saying, “You’re connected now.” Like the 1980s Reese’s commercial–your peanut butter, my chocolate–and suddenly, something sticks.
Twenty-five years ago, we met for the first time at Lake Wales High School. Amanda swears we were connected long before that first day. I believe her. I moved to Lake Wales instead of taking a job in Jacksonville. She chose LWHS over Lakeland High. We spent two years in the same town without ever meeting, making a dozen little choices that could have sent us the other way. If she had zigged while I zagged, when would the universe have linked us? She always knew we were connected–I just took the longer road to get to her. That’s why I have a sextant tattooed on my arm; she’s my north star. The connection was already there; it was just waiting for us to finally notice.
Our entanglement isn’t usually big gestures–it’s the small, strange ways the universe lines us up. I’m sending her a text just as her message comes through. I’m thinking about her and the phone rings–and it’s her. I’m checking her location as she’s pulling in the driveway. We’re sending the same TikTok almost at the same time. It’s just the two of us moving through the world on our own paths, and somehow we keep syncing up.
Our QE has always existed, but time, age, obstacles, love, and tears–both happy and sad–have only made it stronger, harder to ignore, and even easier to feel. It’s something that’s gotten better with age. Like my 35-year-old T-shirt with the Irish Setter that Amanda still wears all the time.
When we were younger, our QE was there, but it was buried in the noise: four kids, endless school days, special interests, and side projects. It surfaced quietly, in missed calls, or letting the other sleep in after a long night with a restless child. It showed up in knowing when one of us was nearing the breaking point, and stepping in before the cracks showed. In getting the exact snack the other was craving, or the only type of cheese that would do. It was small, practical, and quiet—tucked into the everyday mess of keeping our lives running.
Twenty-five years in, it is a look across the room that speaks entire conversations. It’s knowing when the other one is too tired to pretend everything’s fine, handing them a snack, and letting them rest. It’s buying each other the exact same thing as a Christmas present.1 It’s not being able to sleep when the other one is not in the same bed. It’s the everyday choreography we stopped thinking about long ago. Back then it was a guess-hit or miss. Now it’s muscle memory. It is supposed to be a theory about particles, but with us, it feels more like a lived experiment.
That’s why the ice cream mattered.
Not because it was romantic or dramatic, but because it reminded me what QE really looks like: just two people who, in the middle of life, keep ending up in the same place, every time.
One year, we both bought each other The Royal Tenenbaums on DVD.