Why is living so big? These are the reasons.

On a rainy Saturday in November, my girlfriend and I wandered into a board game café downtown. They have a wall of more than eight hundred games. You pay a few dollars to sit at a table and play anything you want.

My kids have been begging for a backyard ice rink for three winters. This November, I finally gave in. I'd watched enough videos to be dangerous.

I was having one of those days. I had overslept, spilled coffee on my shirt and gotten stuck in traffic. By the time I got to the grocery store after work, I was ready to cry over anything.

For Diwali this year, I decided to make a rangoli on our driveway, the colorful patterns my grandmother drew outside her door in Chennai every festival morning. I'd never made one bigger than a dinner plate.

In August, walking on a beach in Maine with my kids, my son spotted a green glass bottle half buried in seaweed. There was a rolled-up piece of paper inside.

I hadn't ridden a bike in fifteen years. My friend talked me into renting one for a trail ride along the river, and I was sure I'd embarrass myself.

Every summer when I was a kid, I stood on the high dive at the town pool and climbed back down. Every single summer. This August, at forty, I finally jumped.

I was a double dutch champion when I was eleven. Two long ropes, turning in opposite directions, and you jump in between them. I hadn't done it in thirty years. Then, this July, I saw two girls on my block trying to jump with one old rope and a lot of frustration.

I moved from Melbourne to Maryland in 2019 for my wife's job. Nobody warned me about Brood X.

My son is thirteen. In May, he came home from school with a kendama, a wooden Japanese toy shaped like a hammer with a ball on a string. The idea is to swing the ball up and catch it on one of the cups, or on the spike.

I held my first grandchild for the first time last Tuesday. Her name is Lila. She weighs seven pounds, two ounces, and she has my mother's chin.

Our city has a minor league baseball team. Nobody's quite sure what the mascot is supposed to be; it's some kind of fuzzy green fish. Last year, the games were played without fans. This April, they opened the stadium again, and my daughter and I went on opening night.

My mother is Swedish and made cardamom buns every Saturday when I was growing up. The whole house smelled like butter and spice. This April, my eight-year-old daughter asked if we could make them together.

For years, my daughter asked for chickens. For years, I said no. This March, I finally said yes, mostly because I'd run out of reasons.

Our town library had been closed to the public for a year. You could order books online and pick them up in a paper bag at the door, but you couldn't go in. This March, it finally reopened.

My nephew Theo is five, and he is the most enthusiastic person I know.

In February, my husband and I cross-country skied six miles through the forest to a backcountry hut in the mountains. We'd never done anything like it. We packed sleeping bags, food and a thermos of soup on our backs.

Our town holds a snow sculpture contest every January, and this year, my sisters and I entered for the first time. Each team gets an eight-foot block of packed snow and two days to turn it into something.