The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don't want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.

Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all. But holes are interesting things.

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.

But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.

I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.