Good weather will do this to people, bond them in their gratefulness.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

o’clock

I don't know. It depends on the day. Depends on the hour of the day...I don't really know if I really want to do that. I think I do and then I think I don't. It makes me really nervous to think about really doing it.

I wanted him to be a toy man that I could bring upstairs with me, then store on a high shelf in the closet. But he was alive and complicated. He came with his own parts that had their own demands.