Every year, we decorate the tall trees in our front yard with warm white lights. It’s one of our small traditions. The lights wrap tightly around the trunks, then travel upward, thinning as they reach the branches, until the trees seem to glow from the...
The Uber driver hopped out before I could reach for the trunk. He lifted my bag, then paused and bent to pick something up from the ground. “A penny,” he said, holding it up between two fingers. “It’s my lucky day.” I joked that finding good...
My friend walked back from the restroom with a wide grin. “You have to see the wallpaper in there. It’s so good. I love it,” she said. We were at a new restaurant, and she kept noticing small design touches that delighted her. Her excitement got...
A few days ago, I stopped in front of a bulletin board at a coffee shop. At the top of one flyer, in large letters, it said Be a Helper. The flyer described a program in which volunteers send a few encouraging text messages each week to...
This morning, in a doctor’s waiting room, I sat across from an older woman and a younger woman who had come along to help her. The older woman’s lap was filled with papers. She held a red pen between her fingers, moving through each page...
It was one of those changes that seems like nothing at first. Ella started closing her door when she did homework. Emma is not fond of this change. For years, both bedroom doors have stayed open, the two of them moving easily between rooms across the...
I clicked “schedule” and smiled. The Halloween Leading with Heart post about teenagers leaving candy for the trick-or-treaters behind them was set to go out on Thursday. I checked it off my list and closed my laptop. The blog was set to publish while I was leading a...
Halloween is a night built on both giving and getting, a small ritual of exchange that plays out one doorstep at a time. Porch lights flicker on at dusk, bowls of candy appear at front doors, and the neighborhood hums with movement. Strangers open their...
I was sitting on our hotel balcony with a cup of coffee, watching the waves roll in, when the most extraordinary rainbow appeared. Its arc stretched across the horizon, every color distinct. On the surface of the water, its reflection wavered and danced, the same...
In the nature video I’m watching, a large snail shell washes ashore. One curious-looking hermit crab finds it first, circling and tapping, testing the edges and poking its head inside. Soon another crab joins, and then another. They circle each other, examining sizes, until a line begins...