It begins as the faintest tinkling, no more than the sound of wind chimes from a neighbor’s house, barely audible among the various sounds that very lightly sprinkle the landscape on a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon, all of which serve to highlight rather than disturb the stillness. Kids on skateboards, two streets over. Further out, the coughing and sputtering of a bad muffler. Birds coming and going in the towering hemlock tree in the front yard, chattering sometimes. And the white noise of the air conditioner upstairs in my son Jack’s room, which blocks out all the rest just as it is designed to do so that he can take his afternoon nap unperturbed.

But this tinkling, perhaps the least of all these sounds, is the very one that worms through, working its way past our best defenses and into his dreams, pulling him out of sleep like a horse in a western drags a bad man behind it with his foot tied to a rope. Jack knows this sound better than any other. It is his music. Every day, he waits patiently for it, knowing that on most days the beautiful musician who plays it will arrive on his street.

I am sitting on the porch, reading a book, and before I am even really aware of the familiar tinkling sound across the way, I hear something else, with striking clarity and force. My 3-year-old son, bellowing from his room upstairs.

“ICE CREAM TRUCK!”

Before I can even locate a scrap of something to serve as a bookmark, he calls out again, more frantic this time.

“DADDY DADDY DADDY! THE ICE CREAM TRUCK IS HERE!”

It isn’t here, actually. Although I can hear it more distinctly now, it is still a good two blocks away. I know from considerable experience that it will be a good 10 minutes before it trundles down Meadow Street. Nevertheless, I bolt upstairs and grab Jack, who is so excited that he can only keep repeating “ice cream ice cream ice cream” as we hustle back down the stairs, through the kitchen and living room, and finally out into the front yard to wait for the ice cream truck.

The truck, colorful and conspicuous even without the twinkling sound, has yet to make an appearance, but we can hear it very clearly now. It is coming, surely. Jack’s face is frozen in anticipation that is quite literally breathless.

“Breathe, son,” I say. “Go ahead and breathe.”

“THE ICE CREAM TRUCK IS COMING, DADDY!” he shouts, as if I am in another county and not holding him in one arm.

He stares up the street with absolute concentration, absolute conviction. The ice cream truck will come, even though he cannot see it. Maybe this is the beginning of faith, the belief in things unseen. I admit that the prospect of ice cream on a hot summer’s day is enough to inspire heavenly thoughts in us both. His sister, Kayden, would be just as excited if she were here, and not at her first Girl Scout camp. But right now, it’s just Jack and me, and when the ice cream truck does make the turn off of Goodyear Street onto Meadow, Jack erupts. His joy is perfect, uncomplicated and uncompromised by anything else, and I know then that this moment, right here, has been branded in me forever.

Five minutes later, we sit on the porch in identical white rocking chairs, eating our ice cream. He has chosen a Spiderman ice cream bar, while I am working on a neopolitan sandwich. He sees me watching and holds it up dramatically, like a torch.

“Let’s do cheers, daddy,” he says, sliding off the rocking chair and pressing his Spiderman bar against my sandwich as if we were holding two slender glasses of champagne. “Here’s to us.”

“To us,” I repeat, and even though I know it is really the only toast he knows, having learned it from his mother from dozens of similar toasts over dozens of dinners, I still cannot suppress a smile. Or a memory.

I must have been in my mid-20s, and I was in town for the weekend to see the family. In those days, my dad had an apartment uptown, and he let me stay there whenever I came home. It was a hot summer night, and the Lakers were playing in the NBA championship series.

“Aren’t you going out?” he said, as we sat at the kitchen table playing a game of gin. “Surely there is something you and Stewart can find to do on a Friday night.”

“Are you kidding?” I said, incredulous. “The Lakers are on. Game five, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, smiling. “Well, I need to run to the store before the game starts. Do you need anything?”

“I just need the Lakers to win this game,” I said.

In less than 30 minutes, with the game just about to tip, he reappeared with a loaf of bread, a six pack of Diet Cokes, and, most importantly, two pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, one for him and one for me.

“Here,” he said. “Black cherry, right?”

More than 20 years later, I cannot remember who won the game that night. But everything else is branded forever.

Here’s to us.

(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at jchriscox@bellsouth.net.)