The truth is, aging can be your realest opportunity to decide how best to live - and the best incentive for getting you to do just that.

Sometimes you know before you know.

I hoped we never had to realize all the opportunities we missed in this life.

I don't think men try to make women be like them, but I think women try to make men be like them, a lot.

If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.

There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead.