Heading into the holidays, it was my intention to greet Advent as a season of hope and joyful anticipation. I’m not sure how well I did on this front. It was an emotional holiday, and as usual, I created unnecessary internal drama by allowing old stories to loop through my mind. There were so many moments when I thought to myself, frustratedly, “how many more Christmases will be like this?” “Like this” is a concoction of all of my usual stuff: longing for…

When I was growing up, the Christmas season was a big deal within my little family unit. This included Christmas Eve and Day and all of the traditions that came with them. But it began at the start of the advent season, the fourth Sunday before Christmas. As I get older, I give more thought to advent and what it means. The holiday season sneaks up faster with every passing year, and my relationship with the holidays becomes more bittersweet and complicated. There’s some…

I was woken up by a dream last night in which I saw my belongings—clothes, mostly, but also some books and papers—outside on the street, wrapped in plastic bags. Sanitation workers were loading them into a garbage truck. In the dream, I found my way onto the sidewalk and pleaded with the sanitation workers to please not throw my things away. I needed them, I said. I wouldn’t be able to get more. But it was one of those dreams in which the…

A friend of mine once told me that, whenever she’s struggling through a bad day or something difficult, she makes extra effort to be kind to others. In fact, she said that she’ll go out of her way to perform small acts of kindness on her hardest days. To be honest, when I heard this, my immediate response was cynical. How can anyone be expected to be especially thoughtful, considerate, or giving on a really bad day? When I reflected on my friend’s…

A quick little story: At one point this week, I got stuck on a subway car that was going nowhere fast. We’d been cruising along as usual, when suddenly the train slowed. And slowed. And came to a very full stop. I’m used to these moments on the New York City subway system. Short stops are common, but really long delays tend to be relatively unusual. This was a lengthy standstill. Even worse, we were stuck in a spot where my phone had…

A week ago, I had some stitches put in my ankle after my dermatologist removed a mole that was headed in the wrong direction. Getting the stitches was pretty painless, and even as the numbness wore off, I was fine. After a few days, though, I started to feel some annoyance with my bandaged ankle. There was an aggravating pulling sensation with any amount of walking. The lip of my sneakers kept rubbing against my Steri-Strips. I had to make careful modifications in…

On Friday, I saw the news that poet Louise Glück had passed away. Food writer Jeff Gordinier wrote in an Instagram post that her collection of poems, The Wild Iris, is “a book that can save your life.” Gordinier noted that her work had been on his mind recently, even before the news of her passing reached him. It hadn’t occurred to me to turn to Glück’s poems over the course of this heartbreaking past week. But I should have, and since Friday,…