Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.

I used to pretend that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one.

As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother-mythic, imaginary-was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her , she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life.

That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fields of my imagination, a hundred thousand suns. And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

Isn't it amazing how, when you strip away everything, people are so much alike?

You know how hind-sight is 20/20? Love is when you look back and wouldn't change anything.

My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct.