By: Roni Jiang

It was a sunny day in the summer of 2022. My friends and I were having a picnic at the beach. Suddenly, a sound bumped in, ba-boo ba-boo, the sound of the ice cream car pulled me back into a memory of my childhood.

Having ice cream as a gift every day after school was the best thing in my childhood. When I was in kindergarten, I lived in a country village with my grandparents. My grandma took the role of walking me back home. Everyday on our way back, my grandma would buy an ice cream for me. She told me, ”This is a gift for your well-being at school today.” Monday is milk flavor, Tuesday is vanilla, Wednesday is strawberry, Thursday is mint, and Friday is chocolate. I looked forward to having grandma’s ice cream every moment during class, but I was still patient with the teacher’s words. Eating ice-cream and walking with grandma back home were the best memories when I was little, but everything changed in the summer when I attended elementary school in Taipei.

In big cities, especially the capital city of Taiwan, Taipei, everyone has a busy life. Everything in Taipei is convenient, and there are all kinds of ice cream, but I can’t find the kind that I used to get after school. I missed that taste and the feeling of getting grandma’s ice cream. The ice cream in my memory disappeared, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. The memory of the ice cream grandma bought me is kept in my mind all the time in my life.

When the sound comes straight into my head, the pictures of grandma’s ice cream float out clearly. It was the sound I had been looking for for years. I ran towards the cart which sells ice cream in my childhood. I expect the taste to be like the ones I had when I was little. However, the ice cream I bought had the same appearance, same smell, but it doesn’t taste like the ones in my memory. Maybe it’s because time flies, or because it’s not the one grandma bought for me as a gift. Ice cream, gift, and my grandma are three cherished memories that will never be forgotten.

Everyone has a piece of memory written into their childhood. It might be the happiness of doing something that’s memorable, some events which inspired you to become the person you are now, or even a lyric and somebody’s words you still remember but never heard again after that time. Those memories stay the best and always stay in our minds.