I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.

I'm like the weather, never really can predict when this rain cloud's gonna burst; when it's the high or it's the low, when you might need a light jacket. Sometimes I'm the slush that sticks to the bottom of your work pants, but I can easily be the melting snowflakes clinging to your long lashes. I know that some people like: sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, sunny and seventy-five, but you take me as I am and never forget to pack an umbrella.

I Still Have Everything You Gave Me It is dusty on the edges. It is slightly rotten. I guard it without thinking. I focus on it once a year when I shake it out in the wind. I do not ache. I would not trade.

Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!

Energy is everything. Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy.