In every person's face, there is one place that seems to express them most accurately. With my grandmother, you always looked at her mouth.

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.

Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

The transparency men have enjoyed for generations, about their ability to frankly work while also reveling in fatherhood, is still complicated for women. Which is not to say that anyone can have everything.

Sometimes, a stage curtain parts and you see: life could be better if you had more. Usually, I think, we can get just as good a different way. But tricks, they do not always work.

I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst of all, love was not powerful enough to change a life.

We all - in the end - die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.