These are the reasons.

We have four enormous oak trees in our yard. Every October, they drop what feels like a million leaves. This year, instead of bagging them, my husband had an idea.

My son married a woman from Ohio, and my grandson is being raised speaking English. I was born in Brazil, and I worried he would never speak my language. I decided to try anyway.

I've driven the Route 9 bus for twenty-two years. I know most of my regular riders by name. A few years back, I started keeping a little whiteboard taped beside the fare box. When I find out it's somebody's birthday, I write it on the board.

My grandparents live on a hill farm in north Wales, and this August I spent two weeks with them for the first time since I was a teenager. My grandfather is eighty-three and has trained sheepdogs his whole life. He took me to a sheepdog trial in the next valley.

My son got his first job this summer, at a bakery in town. He's sixteen. His shift starts at five a.m. He doesn't have his license yet. So every morning in July and August, I drove him there in the dark.

On summer nights in my neighborhood, everybody comes out. The kids ride bikes up and down the block. The older folks bring out lawn chairs. Somebody always has music playing, and somebody's grandmother is always yelling at somebody's kid to slow down.

I dropped out of college at nineteen to work and help my family. I always meant to go back. Life kept getting in the way. Two kids, a full-time job, a mortgage.

My mother has always wanted to go to a Renaissance faire. She's sixty-eight and has watched every movie with knights in it at least twice. So this May, for her birthday, I took her.

Every spring my grandmother takes me to see the cherry blossoms in the park near her house. We've done it every year since I was four.

I grew up in Gujarat, where Holi was the best day of the year. When I moved to Ohio for work, I missed it terribly. So this March, with a few friends from the Indian community, I organized a Holi celebration in a city park and invited everyone.

I work in an office of forty people. Most of us barely knew each other's names. So this year, I decided to do something about it. On the night of February 13th, I stayed late and left an anonymous valentine on every single desk.

On a snowy Friday in February, my roommates and I decided to learn to make sushi. None of us had ever done it. We bought a bamboo mat, sushi rice, sheets of seaweed, fresh salmon, cucumber and avocado and watched a video on someone's phone propped against the toaster.

At forty-five, after twenty years in accounting, I went back to school to become a nurse.

On a rainy Saturday in November, my girlfriend and I wandered into a board game café downtown. They have a wall of more than eight hundred games. You pay a few dollars to sit at a table and play anything you want.

My kids have been begging for a backyard ice rink for three winters. This November, I finally gave in. I'd watched enough videos to be dangerous.

I was having one of those days. I had overslept, spilled coffee on my shirt and gotten stuck in traffic. By the time I got to the grocery store after work, I was ready to cry over anything.

For Diwali this year, I decided to make a rangoli on our driveway, the colorful patterns my grandmother drew outside her door in Chennai every festival morning. I'd never made one bigger than a dinner plate.

In August, walking on a beach in Maine with my kids, my son spotted a green glass bottle half buried in seaweed. There was a rolled-up piece of paper inside.

I hadn't ridden a bike in fifteen years. My friend talked me into renting one for a trail ride along the river, and I was sure I'd embarrass myself.

Every summer when I was a kid, I stood on the high dive at the town pool and climbed back down. Every single summer. This August, at forty, I finally jumped.