These are the reasons.

I took the overnight train from Chicago to New Orleans this spring because I wanted to see the country slowly. I shared a dining car table with strangers at every meal, which the train does on purpose.

My friend Ximena's grandmother, Doña Lupe, offered to teach me to make tortillas when I mentioned I'd never made them. I showed up at her kitchen on a Saturday morning expecting a quick lesson.

Every winter, the wooden fence outside the elementary school on our street turns into a gallery of lost mittens. Whoever finds one hangs it on a fence post, so its owner can find it on the way home.

My partner and I had planned a picnic at the park for our anniversary. It rained. Hard.

I entered the county fair pie contest on a dare from my coworker, Ines. I'm not a baker. I made my grandmother's rhubarb pie from a stained recipe card, and the crust cracked down the middle.

My grandmother's hands are small and covered in thin skin like tissue paper, with knuckles that have gotten bigger over the years. They are the most capable hands I know.

My husband is a volunteer firefighter, and every Tuesday the station has taco night for the volunteers and their families. Fourteen people crammed around a folding table under the fluorescent lights, a giant pan of carne asada, a crockpot of beans, and three kinds of salsa nobody agrees about.

When I started as a baker at a café downtown, my shift began at 4 a.m. My friends thought I was out of my mind.

My grandfather, who is ninety, calls me every morning at seven-fifteen to give me the weather report. He lives four states away. The weather where he lives has no effect on me whatsoever.

There are seventeen stone steps down to the little cove behind my aunt's cottage on the Maine coast. I've counted them since I was small, out loud, every summer.

For my mom's sixtieth birthday, I ordered a cake from the bakery downtown. When I opened the box at the party, it said "Happy Retirement, Gary!" in blue frosting.

I signed up for a beginner pottery class at the community art center because I wanted to make my own coffee mug. Eight weeks later, I have made zero mugs and approximately forty lumps.

Every June, my mother hosts a garden party in her backyard and insists that every guest wear a hat. Not an ordinary hat. A ridiculous hat.

My daughter plays the tuba in her high school marching band. The tuba is almost as big as she is. I have never been prouder of anything in my life.

There's an old arboretum near my apartment that most people drive right past: huge oak trees, winding paths, benches, squirrels everywhere. A gardener named Luis has tended it for twenty-seven years, and every fall he plants daffodil bulbs by the hundreds.

That a square of sunlight on the floor is worth moving across the house for.

Biscuit is a mutt with one floppy ear and one ear that stands straight up, like he's always half listening. We got him from a shelter when he was two, and nobody knows exactly what he is. We just say he's a good boy, which is accurate.

My barber, Sal, has cut my hair every three weeks for eleven years. A haircut takes about fifteen minutes. My appointments take an hour.

My washing machine broke in January and I didn't fix it for six weeks, which is how I discovered Saturday mornings at the Suds & Duds laundromat.

Every evening at about 7:30 I walk across the old footbridge over the river on my way home from work. I've done it a thousand times. Last Tuesday I actually stopped.