Why is living so big? These are the reasons.

My grandmother's watch stopped working this year, a small gold watch my grandfather gave her for their tenth anniversary in 1962. Every jeweler I took it to told me it wasn't worth repairing.

I take a ferry to work every morning across the harbor. It's twenty-two minutes of the best commute in the world.

My grandmother, Dot, makes twelve pies every Thanksgiving. Apple, pecan, pumpkin, sweet potato, chess, and a mince pie that only my uncle eats.

For our tenth anniversary in the house, my partner baked a cake shaped exactly like it. Down to the crooked shutter, the blue front door and the oak tree in the yard, made of broccoli dipped in green frosting for reasons I still don't fully understand.

In August, a sixteen-year-old named Lukas arrived from a small town in Bavaria to live with us for a school year. He had one suitcase, perfect manners and absolutely no idea what a s'more was.

Our town's Christmas parade is about twelve minutes long. It has the high school marching band, three fire trucks, a tractor decorated with lights, the Girl Scouts riding on a hay wagon, and Santa on the back of a convertible borrowed from the car dealership.

My three college roommates and I have had lunch together every Thursday for twenty years. Same Italian place, same booth by the window, same waiter, Vito, until he retired last year.

My eleven-year-old niece entered the regional robotics fair with a robot she built from a kit, a shoebox, two old phone chargers and her grandfather's broken desk lamp. Its only job was to water a houseplant when the soil got dry.

Dear me,

Our town library started a seed library this spring: little wooden drawers full of seed packets that anyone can "check out." The idea is that you grow the plant, let some of it go to seed and bring seeds back for others.

My partner and I have a weekend hobby: reading the little plaques on park benches. You'd be amazed at what people put on them.

After a huge storm in January, my teenage sons decided to build a snowman taller than our house. I told them it was impossible. They took that personally.

On a solo day off in October, I walked into the old carousel building in the park and bought a ticket. Just for me. No kids. Two dollars.

My grandfather took me to my first baseball game in 1998. This summer, I took him back to the same stadium for his ninetieth birthday.

Our street had never had a block party. Somebody had to start it, so I put flyers in every mailbox and hoped for the best.

On a warm June night at my parents' farmhouse, my kids caught fireflies in a mason jar, the same way I did when I was their age, on the same lawn.

At the Saturday farmers market, there's a woman who sells bread from a little cart: sourdough, rye, a seeded loaf, and a cinnamon swirl that sells out by nine. Everyone calls her "the Bread Lady."

At a garage sale in June, I found a box of old vinyl records for ten dollars. Inside was a record with a handwritten label: "Mom and Dad's Wedding Song, 1962." It was a 45 of "Can't Help Falling in Love."

My grandfather shined shoes outside the train station in Philadelphia for thirty-one years. When I was little, he'd let me sit on the little stool next to him on Saturdays and hand him the brushes.

My ugly Christmas sweater was knitted by my great-aunt Phyllis in 1991. It has a reindeer with a pom-pom nose, three-dimensional snowflakes, and a strip of tinsel sewn along the collar that sheds like a cat.