The Postscript

As it turns to night, everyone naturally starts saying, “Buenas noches,” (“Good evening.”) This seems pretty straightforward, but determining when to stop saying “Good afternoon” and start saying “Good evening” is far more complicated than it seems.

I went to bed early with a stomachache and a cough and a sore throat and the feeling that I must have behaved very badly to get all these things at once

Who can blame these two unseen dogs for losing their little minds once a night—the most exciting time of the day—when Daddy finally gets home?

Maybe our marriage is peculiar; I am in no position to say. Maybe every marriage is peculiar in its own way.

If I now asked you to guess what was in the box, no matter how many guesses you were given, I’m betting you would be wrong.

I tell my parents I admire the life they have created for themselves. They have this great cabin, fun friends and neighbors, they bike all summer, ski all winter and, at the end of every day, they get an extra sunset.

While I’m certainly not wishing for the roof to fall in on anyone, I’m not sure it’s been such a bad thing.

My blessings are poorly disguised. They show up wearing false noses and funny eyeglasses and are instantly recognizable unless I am being completely thick-headed—and it is astonishing how often I am.

It turned out I’d been wasting a lot of good pear, but that stopped under Mrs. Johnson’s tutelage.

The rent was suspiciously cheap, but the reviews were all good except to say that the house was on a road with stairs. There is a good reason for this: the town predates wheels.

Somewhere near the middle of our vacation, usually just after we’d reached our destination, my birthday would arrive.

My parents, who buy little tiny blocks of cheese which they cut into little tiny slices and serve on little tiny crackers at precisely five o’clock every evening, were understandably taken aback by the arrival of twenty pounds of cheese.

I imagined I was sort of a golden retriever mix. I was a cool dog, a chill dog. I am actually nothing at all like this.

I used to take pride in traveling light. I fit all my clothes and everything I needed in a small backpack or a carry-on suitcase and hit the road with little idea of where I was going. Then I met Peter.

We might be starting from scratch, but we’ve got a head start. We might be trying something new, but we get credit for time served.

The farmhouse is where I thought I’d grow old. I planted a lot of trees. I had a garden. I painted every wall, inside and out. I thought there was a strong likelihood I’d die in that house. Now I’ve put it up for sale.

I have no cowboy credentials. So, when Bob suggested I perform with a cowboy singer, I was more than skeptical—I thought it was a dumb idea.

The funeral home had been converted into an Airbnb. It was on our way—and suspiciously cheap.

A dog keeps us tethered in the here and now and reminds us that we are living in this moment—and that every moment in the future is imaginary.

More than once in my life, I’ve been accused of having a “Pollyanna attitude.” I didn’t actually know what this meant, except that it was not a good thing.

I don’t think I have envied many people many times in my life, but I very much wanted to whistle when I was six.

I thought things were going pretty well until I remembered the push-ups—and Bob.

I now realize that no one—not even the most popular person in high school—self-identifies as popular.

My heart hurt, reading this forty-year-old letter. I wondered if I wrote back. I hoped he was doing well.

My grandma’s wedding dress was more than a little worse for wear. It had been folded up in a small box and kept safe by my cousin, Jill. (How Jill ended up with it, I do not know.)