For the past several weeks, I have had breakfast with a bluebird. He arrives just as I sit down to eat, lands on the wind chimes engraved with my dead dog’s name, turns toward the screen door, cocks his head, and begins to sing. Sometimes a sweet, whispery chatter, as if he is wishing me a good morning; other times, a rapid chirp-chirp-chirp, as if to scold me for lingering too long over my Barry’s Breakfast Tea. Sometime between my last bite of toast and swallow of tea, my highly acrobatic...

A few days ago, I stood on a beach in Georgia with my daughter. It wasn’t the first beach we’d walked together. The ocean stayed the same. We did not. I can mark the seasons of her life by the beaches we visited. The strange thing about those beaches is that they’ve barely changed. The sand. The tide. The seagulls. The sound of the waves. Meanwhile, the lives we carried onto those beaches have changed completely. Mikayla as a chubby baby in a tiny pink bathing suit and floppy sun hat,...

My wanderings have taken me from Toledo to Tokyo, Pittsburgh to Paris, Vacaville to Vienna, Charleston to Cologne. I have marveled at...