These are the reasons.

There's a single wooden swing hanging from the old oak at the edge of the park, and I sit on it every evening after work. I'm forty-seven. I don't care who sees.

Ingredients: one sleep-in until 8:30. One large pot of coffee. Two kids in pajamas watching cartoons. One dog asleep on your feet.

Every March, my uncle invites the whole family to his sugar shack in Vermont to help tap the maple trees and boil the sap. There are about twenty of us, ages two to eighty-one, all in flannel shirts, all sticky by lunchtime.

When my mother downsized to a small apartment, I found a stack of her garden diaries going back to 1983. Every spring for thirty-six years, she'd written down what she planted, when it bloomed, and how she felt about it.

My neighbor Frank and I have competed for the biggest tomato on our block for six summers. It began as a joke over the fence. It has escalated.

I've been awake since my head hit my pillow tonight and I can't fall asleep. I'm vibrating in an intense way. Since I woke up yesterday morning something has shifted in my consciousness and continues to do so. I don't know how to explain it. It's true that our thoughts create our reality. We are more powerful then we could ever imagine. There is no doubt in me that we do hold the power within us to evolve and know and expand our consciousness. Speaking our truth and being in our integrity is extremely vital for every aspect in our life.

Being honest with ourselves. What we need to change in ourselves. Our old programming, belief systems that doesn't work for us anymore. Thinking and evolving in such a way that takes us to the next level. We are the creators of everything in our lives and our reality.

The power went out at our office building on a Thursday afternoon in August. No computers, no lights, no air conditioning. Our manager said we could go home. Nobody did.

When my dad and I can't figure out what to talk about, we watch old black-and-white movies. It started when I was in college and has carried us through every kind of season.

For my parents' anniversary, my siblings and I chipped in to send them on a hot air balloon ride over the Napa Valley. They are both terrified of heights. We did not think this through.

I took the crossing guard job after I retired from the post office because I missed being outside. I didn't expect to love it this much.

Last January, after a heavy snowfall, my Finnish neighbor knocked on my door and asked if I'd like to learn how to make a snow lantern. I said yes before I knew what one was.

Every weekday at 8:05, my two-year-old and I stand at our window and wave at the city bus. The driver, a woman with braids and gold earrings, honks twice and waves back. My son loses his mind with joy every time.

Our mail carrier, Doreen, has walked our route for nineteen years. My kids started leaving her drawings in the mailbox when they were four and six. She started leaving drawings back.

Today I said goodbye to my 2004 station wagon, which carried me through two jobs, three apartments, one wedding and roughly two hundred thousand miles.

Dear Mrs. Adeyemi,

At six a.m. the YMCA pool belongs to a small group of regulars. There's Ida, who is eighty-one and swims a slow, perfect breaststroke. There's a firefighter who does flip turns like a dolphin. And there's me, a recent convert who mostly floats with purpose.

Since my first trip abroad in 1994, I've sent a postcard to myself from every place I've visited. Sixty-two so far. They live in a shoebox in my closet.

Dear Ms. Pham,

Our neighborhood roller rink, open since 1959, does an adult skate on Wednesday nights. My best friend Kiara dared me to go. I hadn't skated since sixth grade.

My nephew Theo is six and believes that the ocean is "full of tiny secrets." On a gray morning in March, I took him to the tide pools at low tide to find some.