Tealicious on a Sunday afternoon is a symphony of chimes, from the bell over the door and chattering from students and families coming in and out.

There’s a little girl — probably around 4 years old — dressed in a red coat and a pink dress. Zoe, I hear her brother call her. He’s probably around 7. Their mother brings over a bubble waffle bigger than Zoe’s whole face. Her eyes widen in anticipation. She has a sweet tooth, just like I did when I was a kid.

Fifteen minutes later, a second family joins Zoe’s. Two parents and a daughter who looks to be around seven or eight. Zoe immediately hugs the older girl, clinging to her arm. She starts singing her name — “Av-er-y, av-er-y, Av-er-y.” But she can’t say her r’s, so it sounds like “Av-er-wee, Av-er-wee, Av-er-wee.” I keep waiting for Avery to get annoyed or for one of the adults to tell her to quiet down. No one does, and Zoe keeps singing.

A mother and her teenage son walk into the store. He’s dressed in a black graphic tee with gray baggy jeans. He refuses to stand next to his mother, lingering behind her while she orders. He sits down at a table as she waits at the counter for their drinks. She tries to show him something on her phone. He barely glances at it, putting his AirPods in for a FaceTime call — trapping his mother in silence as they leave the store.

Meanwhile, Zoe targets her brother now. She grabs onto his arm and swings him around with all the strength she can muster in her tiny body. And he lets her. Stumbling around the store, he starts laughing and then chases her around while making dinosaur noises. She can’t stop giggling.

A few tables down from Zoe, there are three high-school-age girls talking about college rankings. “UCLA is tied with Dartmouth, and Berkeley went down.” “Northwestern is good. I didn’t know that.” “Harvard, Princeton, Yale ...” “My family had a tradition of applying to Princeton just so they could get a rejection letter.” “You should apply, get in and then not go there.” They laugh, but the laughter dies quickly.

Zoe is sitting at the high table again, her feet swinging underneath her. She sings “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over in her high-pitched voice. The adults smile down at her and the older kids talk about field trips to the zoo. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she sings, softening the worries and awkward silences circling the rest of the store.

I decide to get back to work, putting my AirPods in and tuning out Zoe’s song. I glance over at her one last time, taking a sip of my brown sugar milk tea. Full sugar. My sweet tooth might be one of the few things that hasn’t changed from my childhood. But maybe Zoe has given me another taste of my memories — at least for one Sunday afternoon.