Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown.

People are always afraid of the unknown - and banding together against the Thing That Is Different From Us is a time-honoured tradition for rallying the masses.

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.

Why do some memories bleed out of nowhere and others stay locked behind doors?

Energy can't be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?