There is comfort knowing we’ve only just begun. “We are at the beginning of our life journeys. We are going to be 50 and still wondering what are we going to next.” — my dear friend, Tonia It’s not just that Tonia is filled with delicious bits of wisdom like this. It’s that she shares […]

When I was a little girl, I signed up for an international penpal. I picked Australia because I was intrigued by the land of koalas and funny accents. When I got my first letter, with vital stats and photograph and everything, I was disappointed to learn that my new penpal was named Chan and she […]

I have never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day, but I might just have to start. I had such a lovely time on Saturday. When I picked up Rama that morning, I was greeted with a smile and a dozen tulips! And that was just the tip of the sweet iceberg. He had for […]

Last night, I remembered how it felt to be carried by the sound of a word. I was lifted by vowels, jolted by consonants and wooed by a poet’s breath. I attended a reading by Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and it moved me. I didn’t realize how much it moved me until this […]

Mom and me, Big Bear Mountain, ca. 1980 I know I don’t know what cold really is. I’ve lived in Southern California most of my life, and I can probably count the times I’ve seen the snow on my fingertips. I don’t know how it feels to bundle up head to toe. I have never […]

Today, I am celebrating my little victories, like making do with the limited groceries I had in the fridge and ending up with a green bean frittata, pushing myself all the way to the reservoir to meet Becky for an early morning walk, and learning a new way to string beads so that I could […]

You Are Free, an illustration I drew for Measure Magazine My friend Daniele is doing something very cool this year. She’s doing everything that scares her. I love that idea: Taking wild, courageous leaps into territory we’ve never gone before–territory we assumed was blocked off with yellow tape and orange cones. I want to do […]

I want to tell you something new — new, like the blinding white of our freshly painted living room ceiling or my neighbor upstairs whose name is the same as a Green Day album — but I am still stuck in the old. I am still thinking about last year, glorious 2003 that was so […]

I don’t make resolutions each year, because I’m afraid of disappointing myself. But that is exactly why I need to this time. Because fear (of forgetting, of flailing, of failing) is holding me back. Years pass while my dreams gather dust on a shelf, and what good are dusty, old dreams? Exactly. So. In 2004, […]

When I was in junior high and high school, one of my favorite things to do at the end of a year was sit on my bed with a blank calendar and a pile of colored pens. I loved reading my old calendar to see what I did that year and marking the new one […]