These are the reasons.

Our street started a holiday cookie exchange five years ago with six families, each bringing a dozen cookies. This year there were thirty-four families and over four thousand cookies.

I've been married to Simone for twenty-two years, and I want to write about her laugh.

My granddad spent forty years as a mechanic, and his garage is a museum of his life: walls covered in license plates, a calendar from 1983 he never took down, a radio permanently tuned to an oldies station, and coffee cans full of every bolt and screw ever made.

My grandmother is ninety-one and had never used a smartphone until I gave her one for her birthday. The first week was chaos.

My neighbor decided to bake her own wedding cake. She has no baking experience. She practiced in her kitchen every weekend for three months, and since we share a wall, I became her official taste tester.

My daughter's under-eight soccer team lost every single game this season. Every one. They scored two goals all year, one of which was an own goal by the other team.

My nine-year-old's piano recital was in a church basement with folding chairs and a slightly out-of-tune upright. She had practiced "Für Elise" for four months.

My husband and our neighbor across the street, Kevin, have had a Christmas lights rivalry for eight years. It started with a few strings on the porch. It has become a full-blown arms race.

I was struggling to carry six bags of groceries up the three flights of stairs to my apartment when a kid of about twelve came bounding up behind me. Without asking, he grabbed three bags and carried them up for me.

Every Saturday at nine a.m., about a dozen men in their fifties and sixties play pick-up basketball at the park courts. I joined at fifty-two after my son told me I needed "a hobby that isn't the lawn."

I've bought an almond croissant at the same bakery every morning for nine years. Every single morning. Same time, same order, same seat by the window.

Dear Bus Number 12,

On a work trip to Taipei, a colleague named Mei took me to Shilin Night Market after a long day of meetings. I had no idea what I was in for.

My college friend Elif got married in her grandparents' village in the mountains of Turkey, and I flew halfway around the world to be there.

At my naturalization ceremony this spring, I was so excited I put my tie on inside out. Nobody told me until after the photo.

A friend had an extra ticket to the opera and dragged me along. I'd never been. I assumed I'd hate it. I wore jeans.

My daughter's first haircut, at two years old, was a big event. My mother insisted on coming. My father came to take photos. We brought a stuffed elephant for moral support.

My coworker, Abdi, brought a jar of his sourdough starter to the office in a little cooler, and announced that he was giving everyone in our department "a piece of the family."

Every August, my whole extended family rents the same old cabin on the lake. It has creaky floors, a temperamental stove and exactly one bathroom for fourteen people. We love it.

There's a stone footbridge in my neighborhood with amazing acoustics underneath. On Sunday afternoons in summer, a cellist plays there. Nobody knows her name. She doesn't put out a tip jar.