Some of the best memories are simple. Nothing profound, nothing to analyze at all. Just the bliss of a sunny spring day in an urban childhood. A day for shedding winter layers, for walking in sandals in the park, hand in hand with Mom—who agrees that, yes, it is a day made for ice cream. I remember being in Central Park with my mother, seeking out the ice cream wagons, looking for their boxy white freezers and striped umbrellas. Before the roll-out of the Chipwich, before the advent of the Dove Bar—each of these brands appearing in the decadent 1980s, the first boom decade of "pay more, you deserve it" (these ice cream bars broke the $1.00 barrier of the times)—there was just Good Humor and Popsicle. Simple, affordable, artificial, but still good. I remember Toasted Almond bars (my favorite of the genre now), Chocolate Eclairs, King Cones, and Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches. I enjoyed Fudgsicles, red-white-and-blue Bomb Pops, and the packaged ice cream treat I loved perhaps the best back then: the original Creamsicle. Sitting on a bench, sucking on the icy orange outer shell, trying to resist the temptation to bite through right away to the creamy vanilla center. I always lost that battle with myself, still do. In my world, ice cream knows no patience. I'd sit there with my Mom, do my best to make it last: the ice cream, her company, the rush of cold on my teeth, the sun on my face. Years later, I'd chase down that comfort in the cafeteria of my boarding school. I remember (calories be damned in my dancer's world, I'd shave them off somewhere else) ending up with bowls filled half with orange sherbet, half with vanilla ice cream. I remember closing my eyes, letting a mix of sherbet cream melt on my tongue, and it was bliss. It tasted just like a Creamsicle, tasted just like when I was little, when life was simple, and my mother's hand in mine led me to an ice cream cart on a warm spring day.
Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
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