The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

There is no question that the objects that surround us impact our experience of the world.

And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don't. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it's not true. But still. It is true.

And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others-and, someday, you'll see how those two things are exactly the same.

Maybe the past is supposed to fade-and that's actually a kindness of human memory.

You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.

We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can't remember become the story of who we are.