He didn’t fold his arms around her, and he didn’t hold her close. Instead, he gave her a kiss that suggested a future.

If his choice now was to risk either sunshine with a chance of rain or heatstroke with a chance of tornado, he’d go with the sunshine.

I was feeling sorry for myself and immediately assumed her life was going better than mine. Ridiculous, of course—no one can know what a stranger’s life is like. Often we don’t even know what a loved one’s life is like. We all keep so many things to ourselves.

The ski club was a frugal and intergenerational group. It gave dime-store trophies for speed and agility within categories of gender, age, and experience, and so eventually everyone got a trophy.