I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.

From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise.

Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer - that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with the people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.