Thornton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin — a place with wide skies and long horizons. But his best line, the one about enjoying the ice cream while it’s on your plate, hits even harder when you’re standing somewhere a little less poetic. Somewhere like Mass Ave as it empties into Cambridge, right where the city exhales and the old bars used to be.
There was a time when that stretch was its own kind of chapel — neon lights humming, doors swinging open, music leaking into the night air. Places where people fell in and out of love, made promises they meant for at least an hour, and told stories that got better every time they were retold. Most of those bars are gone now, replaced by whatever the future thinks we need. Still, if you pay attention, the ghosts walk beside you, connecting past to present.
And that’s where Wilder’s line lands:
“My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate.”
You hear that on a street like Mass Ave, and it stops being a clever quote. It becomes a truth you can feel in your chest. Because that whole stretch — the old bars, the new storefronts, the people drifting toward the river or the Red Line — it’s all a reminder that nothing stays the way it was. Not the places, not the people, not the nights you thought would last forever.
But the moment you’re in?
That’s still yours.
Maybe it’s the way the late light hits the pavement.
Maybe it’s the memory of a bar that isn’t there anymore.
Maybe it’s just the simple fact that you’re alive enough to notice any of it.
That’s the ice cream.
That’s the sweetness he meant.
I’ve spent decades trying to decode the “why” of things — why this turn, why that loss, why the road bent instead of straightening. But walking Mass Ave toward Cambridge, you realize the road doesn’t owe you an explanation. It just asks you to keep moving, to keep noticing, to keep tasting whatever small sweetness is still on your plate.
Not asking why.
Not asking whither.
Just letting the moment be what it is — fleeting, imperfect, and somehow beautiful because it won’t come again.
Mass Ave in my memory.
Cambridge in my heart.
And the two of them — the street I haven’t seen in years and the city that still knows my name — they slide together and become part of the ice cream on my plate.
Because even if they’re yesterday’s places, they still melt into today — a little sweet, a little sad, the kind of taste you don’t forget.
And that’s enough to carry me forward, even from here.
And for this day, that’s enough.
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