Intensity: Lychee nut sorbet at SoCo Creamery, Great Barrington, MA

Like many six-year-olds, my daughter Bean has a well-tuned ice cream radar. So the other day we're out having a nice stroll in Great Barrington. And as usual, Bean was doing her seemingly spaced out meandering three feet behind the other kids. She takes life at her own pace, that one. Anyway, there she was checking out the clouds and the cracks in the sidewalk and anything else that caught her fancy, when she popped her head to attention.

“There is an ice cream store near here,” she said.

Our stroll had now turned into a safari.

“Look,” she said, “There are people coming up the street and they have ice cream, and look at those other people, they have ice cream, there is has got to be ice cream around here.” She twisted her head in the air as if to catch the scent. And with that she was off, lollygagging be damned.

We followed her lead and soon found ourselves at SoCo Creamery. I told the kids we could share one cup of ice cream, but then a flavor on the sorbet menu caught my eye: Lychee nut. OK, maybe two cups were in order. We got one cup with scoops of chocolate and butter pecan ice cream and then a smaller cup of the lychee nut sorbet.

The girls set about destroying the ice cream in a spoon to spoon battle. I made faint attempts to get them to, I don’t know, slow down and experience the moment, but, yeah, that was not going to happen. The best I could manage was to make them sit down every third bite.

There was a disco ball in the back of the store and this intoxicated them. Having succumbed once or twice to the magic of a disco ball, I had a hard time arguing when Bean insisted on standing in the back corner and swinging her hips and elbows under the glow. There were only a few people in the store and the back was empty. Why not?

While the girls, faces now covered in chocolate, made like Solid Gold dancers, my son and I tucked into the lychee nut sorbet.

I like intensity. In my friends, in my music, and, as it turns out, in my dessert. After the first bite, my son handed me the taster spoon he’d saved from when we ordered.

“Use this” he said. “The flavor is incredible, but only in really small amounts.”

I had to agree.

A dab of the sorbet filled my mouth like a potent perfume: sweet, floral at first and then gathering toward a stronger almost bitter moment as the last of the icy bits faded on my tongue.

It was delicious in a slow, one-itty-bitty-bite-at-a-time kind of way. This is a kind of enjoyment I’m only just learning to appreciate. I’ve always struggled with moderation, and, paired with my inclination toward intensity, my tastes have gotten me into trouble on occasion.

It’s taken me years to learn that some things are not meant for heavy doses. Too much and your senses singe, and, once that happens, all the lovely depth and complexity starts to feel like a pounding assault, and soon it feels like you're stuck in a room watching Carlo Marx and Dean Moriarty sit cross-legged on some dirty mattress, staring into each other’s eyes and rattling on about nonsensical cosmic mysteries until dawn. Which, if that’s your thing, is fine. It’s too much for me. And yet, for a long time that’s what I thought intensity had to be.

Not so, I'm coming to realize. Intensity can come in one bite, in one moment, in a burst that grabs you and then lets go.

It takes a certain kind of restraint that doesn’t come naturally to me to savor such moments.

On this afternoon, I followed my son’s lead. One tiny taste at a time. Cool, sweet and refreshing. We watched my daughters boogie under the disco ball. We told funny stories and laughed. And then with half the cup left we put down our spoons. That was enough. Anymore would have been too much. But oh, it was lovely for a while.