It was a bedtime story of my own making, better than counting sheep, an adolescent dream that magically transported me from the cramped Brooklyn apartment I called home to a southern California beach, right to the doorstep of the Nelson family.

That would be Ozzie and Harriet, David and Ricky, all-American TV at its best, even if a bit wholesome in retrospect. It was a reflection of a time (late Fifties/early Sixties). It was, in a way, the precursor to reality TV, the real Nelson family scripting itself into the TV Nelson family, even using exterior shots of their actual house for the show (the interior was an onset facsimile).  Who could have known that decades later would bring us into the living room of another Ozzy and his family, no hidden dysfunction here, everything off-the-cuff in the WYSIWYG, wacky world of the Osbournes?

Even if there was nothing terribly adventurous about “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” I was hooked on it, partly for the escape from family as I knew it to family that seemed too good to be fabricated, but mostly for that heartthrob, Ricky, who had a way of curling his lip that would make me melt. Never mind the searing eyes.  David, the big brother, smart and grounded, would be my big brother, too.

Now David is dead, the last of the Nelsons to go. The day Ricky was killed in a plane crash – December 31, 1985 – I had long since stopped following his career, but all it took was hearing the first notes of “Lonesome Town” or “Travelin’ Man,” “Dream Lover” or “Poor Little Fool” to remind me that memory has a way of pocketing itself, a slice of comfort pulled from a voice, a song. Once a fan, always a fan.  I was weeks into a pregnancy at the time of his death, a new family in the making, no mistaking it for a scripted one that could not possibly live up to anyone’s sense of the ideal. No matter; before long my daughter would have her own favorite TV shows (and rock stars) giving rise to her own fantasies and dreams with, perhaps, the added irony of her career taking her behind-the-scenes on some of TV’s top reality shows.

In the wake of Ricky’s death came the airing of some dirty family laundry, Kris (ex-wife of Ricky, sister of Mark Harmon) threatened to sue over his life insurance and tried to take control of his estate away from David. Needless to say, the big brother won.  It was the big brother, too, who had said, in a 1971 Esquire interview, quoted in the New York Times, “It’s an awfully big load to carry, to be everyone’s fantasy family.”  To which I would add some down-home wisdom, his brother’s, words from a song written in response to ill-behaved fans wanting the old Ricky, not the new Rick: You can’t please everyone/so you’ve got to please yourself. Ironic that “Garden Party” would become a hit, and, to my thinking, a song that speaks to something gone with a catchy anthem phrase ushering in a New Age.

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Oprah and Sir Paul McCartney, Bill T. Jones and Jerry Herman, Merle Haggard. Sitting in a box at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, this year’s honorees for a lifetime of artistic achievement.

I admit it – it’s a cheap thrill, the annual broadcasting of artists being honored and their celebrity/artist friends paying tribute, sometimes with wit, always with admiration.  And the timing is deliberate, the last week of the year, everything (except post-Christmas holiday sales) at a standstill, nothing but reruns and round-the-clock showings of It’s a Wonderful Life, days away from one year ending and another beginning.  It’s too easy to be cynical, call it politicking by another name, a subjective process at best. In theory, though, the Kennedy Center Honors are not a competition on the order of the Oscars and Tonys, Emmys and National Book Awards.  There is no short list and ‘best of’.’  Yes, an argument can always be made for talented and hard-working artists so under the radar there are not enough members on a nomination/selection committee to muster interest. And, yes, there are staged moments and predictable punch lines, Chris Rock looking up at the honorees, one in particular, “the most powerful person in the world,” he says with that winning smile, “and sitting right next to her, Barack Obama.”  But at the heart of it all, it’s one night when we all learn something about the artists we know and admire as well as the ones we know less about. We get to acknowledge – as collectively as possible – the ways in which art enriches our lives.

Most years I watch, sometimes I don’t. Something about this year’s ceremony struck a chord. It wasn’t just Jennifer Hudson, joined by the Tennessee State University Choir, in a heartstring-tugging rendition of “I’m Here,” from The Color Purple; or Mavis Staples singing “Let It Be” with James Taylor; or Steven Tyler rocking the house with a medley from Abbey Road.  It was the recognition of art as a measure of passing time, McCartney with Lennon, and without him; Oprah, inimitable, one incarnation spiraling into the next; the brilliant Bill T. Jones, thankfully, still here to bring us Spring Awakening and Fela;  Jerry Herman, a reminder of Broadway at its best, tradition (Hello, Dolly) and innovation (La Cage Aux Folles) in one versatile individual; Merle Haggard, a very American legend. I say the word, ‘yesterday,’ a song pops into my head.  I catch a few lines from “Okie from Muskogee” or listen to the Grateful Dead cover of “Mama Tried,” I marvel at the transcendent power of music, hicks and hippies bringing their own to spin to the very same notes.

Even more poignant, perhaps: among the very first honorees, in 1978, was Marian Anderson, performing all over Europe but denied from performing at Constitution Hall because of her race. It took the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt to make possible Anderson’s now famous 1939 Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial, exquisitely brought to life in a novel by Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing.

And just for fun:  Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz was offered the honor but his conditions for acceptance made the center rescind: he would have to be the only honoree, and the ceremony would have to be at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

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