Remember the first time you tasted gelato? On a family trip to Tuscany twenty years ago with my late husband John and teen-aged daughter Kate, I ordered a bacio gelato at a cafe in town. When the velvety cold chocolate-hazelnut lusciousness hit my mouth, it was like all my best ice cream memories rolled into one...licking a chocolate ice cream cone at Euclid Beach amusement park growing up in Cleveland with Dad, scarfing down melting Haagen Dazs vanilla-chocolate-almond bars with John and Kate in summer when we lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, or enjoying an after-dinner treat on our sailboat, Laughing Goat, on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala after John, Kate and our dog Elmo chugged down the river in the dinghy in the gathering dusk to the Esso station and brought back crumbly, stale Hershey bars that tasted of home.
I love the happiness on my grandson's face when he tastes coconut gelato for the first time on a recent trip to New Orleans. I hope he never loses his sense of wonder at the world offering up its dazzling small and large joys.
If you want to learn about my sailing adventure with my husband John and young daughter when we left everything behind to follow John's lifelong dream and sail away , go here to find Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love, and Loss.
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