These are the reasons.

At the end of the road to the beach where we vacation, there's a food truck run by a couple from Trinidad. It has no sign, just a hand-painted pepper on the side and a line every evening at six.

Every year, my third-grade class makes Valentine's cards for the residents at the nursing home down the street. This year, for the first time, we got to deliver them in person.

On April 8th, the whole cul-de-sac gathered in the Nguyens' driveway with folding chairs and cardboard eclipse glasses. We were right on the path of totality, and nobody wanted to watch alone.

I found my wedding dress at a thrift store for thirty-five dollars. It was ivory lace, a little yellowed, with a tag from a bridal shop in Ohio dated 1974.

At the water park this summer, my kids and I watched a grandmother, at least eighty, climb to the top of the tallest slide. She was wearing a bright floral swimsuit and a pink swim cap with rubber flowers.

On a hiking trail near my house, someone has been hiding painted rocks along the path. Ladybugs. Tiny houses. A rock that says "You're halfway there!" right at the halfway point. One with a perfect little portrait of a fox.

Last fall a windstorm knocked down half of my backyard fence. I'm a single mom with two kids and very little money, and I just stared at it for a week.

Things I noticed on the commuter train this morning:

My niece, who is six, made me a birthday card. It's a folded piece of orange construction paper, and it's the best card I've ever received.

When a big ice storm knocked out power across our county in January, the only place with lights on was the Starlite Diner on Route 9, which has its own generator.

In March, my neighbor built a small wooden cabinet at the end of her driveway and painted it bright blue, with a sign that says: "Little Free Pantry. Take what you need. Leave what you can."

In December, I got a Christmas card in the mail with a return address I didn't recognize. Inside was a note from a woman in Oregon. She'd been sorting through boxes in her great-aunt's attic and found a Christmas card my grandmother had sent in 1987. The card had never been mailed.

My grandmother is eighty-eight and had never been on an airplane until this summer, when we flew her from San Antonio to Seattle to meet her new great-grandson.

On my first visit to Miami, I stopped at a little fruit stand on Calle Ocho run by an older Cuban man named Ernesto. He had mamey, guava, sapote and fruits I had never even heard of.

My daughter lost her first tooth at dinner, in a piece of corn on the cob. She held it up like she'd found a diamond.

I walked the last 280 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago in Spain this year, alone, at fifty-eight. My kids thought I'd lost my mind.

I walk my neighbor's dog, Bruno, every morning at six while she works her nursing shift. He's a hundred-pound mastiff mix with the soul of a nervous kitten.

There's a bike co-op in the old warehouse district where anyone can come and fix their bike for free, with tools and help from volunteers. I started going because I couldn't afford a bike shop. I kept going because it's one of my favorite places in the city.

After fifteen years of playing guitar in my bedroom, I played my first paid gig this summer: a Friday night at a coffee shop, for forty dollars and a free sandwich.

In May, the news said a giant solar storm might push the northern lights much farther south than usual. I didn't believe it. I live in Ohio. We don't get auroras.