These are the reasons.

My neighbor bought an old ice cream truck at an auction this spring, for no reason that he could explain. It plays "Turkey in the Straw" very loudly and only sort of in tune.

I grew up in Houston and had never seen real snow until this winter, when my job moved me to Minneapolis.

Eleven years ago, waiting for the 38 bus in the rain, a woman next to me sneezed seven times in a row. I said "Bless you" after each one, getting louder every time. By the seventh, we were both crying with laughter.

My daughter has been struggling with reading since kindergarten. Letters swim around for her. She'd get frustrated and close the book and hide under the table.

My roommate and I have rated every dumpling spot within walking distance of our apartment in a shared spreadsheet. There are forty-one entries. There are columns for "wrapper chew," "soup factor," and "would bring my mom."

There's an old woman in my neighborhood who sets up an easel on the corner of 9th and Holly every morning at seven and paints the same street scene. She's been doing it for years.

My mother-in-law bakes pies. A lot of pies. About forty a month. She gives them all away.

There's a little café near my office with a chalkboard by the register. If you want, you can pay for an extra coffee, and they write it on the board: "1 coffee, from Lisa." Anyone who needs a coffee can come in and claim one, no questions asked.

On a road trip down the California coast, my partner and I took a detour through the Avenue of the Giants, a thirty-mile road through ancient redwood forest.

On our honeymoon in Maui, my husband and I went snorkeling at a beach where the guidebook promised sea turtles. We spent an hour seeing nothing but sand and a few gray fish. We were about to give up.

On a trip to Dublin, I got into a taxi with a driver named Seamus who was about seventy and asked me, within thirty seconds, whether I liked music.

When I moved into my tiny city apartment, my mother gave me a Meyer lemon tree in a pot. "Every home needs something growing," she said.

My seventeen-year-old daughter got her first job this summer, scooping ice cream at the shop on Main Street. She came home sticky and exhausted every night.

To Mrs. Kowalski, wherever you are:

Our neighborhood association turned an old garden shed into a "tool library." You can borrow a drill, a ladder, a pressure washer or a pasta maker for a week, for free, with a library card made of laminated cardboard.

A bouquet of roses was delivered to my door on Valentine's Day with a card that said "To my darling Patricia, all my love, Harold." I am not Patricia. I live alone with a cat named Bean.

This year I made a goal of writing one thank-you note every week. Not for gifts, just for people.

My father-in-law gave me a bonsai tree for my birthday this year with very serious instructions. He's been growing bonsai for forty years. He has a juniper that is older than me.

For my mother's seventy-fifth birthday, my brothers and I hired a mariachi band to serenade her at seven in the morning, the way my father used to do every year before he got too shy about it.

My daughter came home from first grade one day and announced that her best friend was Ms. Dolores, the lunch lady.