Why is living so big? These are the reasons.

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.

On a trip to the Oregon coast, I spent a morning on the pier watching an old fisherman reel in rockfish one after another. He must have caught twenty.

I bought a peach at a roadside stand in Georgia this August. One peach. It cost a dollar.

This one starts in a hospital, but it's a happy story, I promise. My dad works as a security guard at the children's hospital, and every December a high school choir comes to sing in the lobby.

My brother texts me one terrible joke every day. He's been doing it since 2014. I've received approximately 1,800 terrible jokes.

My son tried to whistle for most of second grade. He practiced at breakfast, in the bath, in the back seat of the car, producing nothing but air and spit.

I repainted my front door yellow last weekend. Sunflower yellow. My neighbors' doors are all brown or gray.

After a twelve-hour shift at the warehouse, my coworker Bao and I stop at the same noodle shop on Fourth Street. It's open until two. The owner's daughter does her homework at the corner table, and the TV plays soap operas with the sound off.

My twin daughters, age seven, opened a lemonade stand on our corner in July. They charged fifty cents a cup. By noon they had made four dollars and given away about thirty free cups to "people who looked thirsty."

I love the sound rain makes on the skylight above my desk. It's like a crowd of tiny people applauding very politely. Today it rained all afternoon, and I worked slower than usual, on purpose, because I didn't want it to end.

My grandpa taught me to drive on the gravel road behind his farm in a pickup older than my mother. I was twelve. I could barely see over the dashboard.

Dear Mr. Alvarez,

On a Tuesday afternoon in May, traffic stopped completely in the parking lot of our grocery store. A mother duck was leading eleven ducklings from the drainage pond to the creek on the other side.

We planned our wedding for months. Outdoor ceremony by the lake, white chairs in rows, string lights in the trees. The forecast said sunny.

My best friend Imani asked me to give a toast at her wedding. I'm a terrible public speaker. My hands shake holding a coffee cup in a meeting.

Our apartment building has a little roof deck nobody uses because of the pigeons. In August, during the Perseid meteor shower, I put up a sign in the lobby: "Shooting stars on the roof, 11 p.m. Bring a blanket."