Why stumbling upon something meant something — Here are some moments from before the iPhone: Due to a train strike I have ended up in Luxembourg. I have no friends, no connections, no map of the place. I meet a Canadian who is about my age at a youth hostel. We decide to go to a discotheque…

When someone close dies and you’re far away — All the rushing around death used to make no sense to me. Seems like the last thing you’d want to do is anything. But I get it now. The busyness, the bookings, the bustle, it all keeps you acting and not thinking. When you stop for a minute, it hits…

Forced to sell my baseball cards when I was broke, I missed out on a lot of money — but learned some valuable lessons — To answer the question posed in the title: it sucks. No shock there, I suppose. And no, I’m not exaggerating. If I still had the baseball card collection I possessed 30 years ago, I would be able to auction it for around half a million dollars today. I thought about…

How jigsaw puzzles presented the big picture. I did not like doing jigsaw puzzles. My husband did. Early in our marriage we discovered our irreconcilable differences and avoided the subject. But, as is the case of many marriages, the arrival of children changed things. Without discussion or warning, my husband…

On the importance of gathering and tradition — Whenever I think of Michigan, my olfactory memory kicks in first, flooding my nostrils with the musty odor of our cottage basement. Each year, when I first descend down those basement steps, the odor smacks me in the face. It’s not unpleasant, just forceful. With it, I am struck by…

I’m done pretending that everything’s fine — I’m not okay. It’s a simple three-word confession. I’m. Not. Okay. I’m not okay with the rise of authoritarianism, the rhetoric of “my freedom vs. yours,” or the consistent need for views to be punctuated by the ring of rifle fire. Every morning I’m faced with reminders on the backs…

There are a lot — It was a mistake to sell my apartment in Brooklyn. It was a mistake to come back to Los Angeles for a boy. It was a mistake not to swim through a magical underwater tunnel in Kauai, that led to a cylinder-like rock formation with a ceiling to the sky…