Why is living so big? These are the reasons.

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.

My parents have played Scrabble every evening after dinner for forty-three years. They keep a running score in a notebook. The current total is my mother ahead by 3,412 points.

Every Sunday, I walk to the bagel shop on the corner with my two-year-old on my shoulders. The man behind the counter, Murray, has worked there for forty years.

When I was a girl, my father would put a record on every Sunday after church and dance with my mother in the living room. All of us children would join in, tripping over each other.

When the mangoes come into season in Florida, my mom calls me every single day to report on her tree.

The used bookshop on my street has a resident cat named Professor, a huge gray Maine Coon who sleeps in the poetry section and judges every customer.

Our city orchestra gives one free concert a year, in the big park by the river, on the last Saturday of August. This year, my husband and I went for the first time.

I left a copy of my favorite novel on a bench in Lisbon this spring, with a note inside: "Please read this, then leave it somewhere for the next person. Write where you found it." I wrote my email address at the bottom.