I thought of the priest who'd told me that many religions hold that it is easier to be closely connected to people we love after death than before.

I remember once when we were moving, driving across country, and it was raining so hard, the windshield wipers going fast and squeaking, and then: nothing. It stopped. I looked out the window ahead of me and it was clear. I looked out the back and there was the rain, still going. Nobody said anything, but there it was, a near miracle, a rain line, a way of seeing just where something starts, when usually you are just in the middle of it before you notice it. That's how it feels to me now, to not want to be like (that) anymore. I see the line.

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

I like to listen to sad music when I’m sad. It seems honest. It makes me cry, and sometimes a good cry is the only thing that can make you feel better.

It feels like some part of me that was curled down and waiting in the dark has risen, and now stands stretching and strong in the sunshine. I knew it.

*We give so little when it's in us always to give so much more. It's bothering to listen with an open heart to someone who smells bad. It's hard.

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.