I’m a city girl at heart, I like to say. I grew up in DC — not Washington, not the suburbs surrounding the city, but DC proper. I have scars on my knees from learning to roller skate in alleys, and I started riding the city bus by myself at age 10. I can parallel park on either side of the street with mere inches to spare.

I still feel at home in cities. I love the vibrancy, the people watching, the constantly changing streetscape. As an introvert, I enjoy being surrounded by a crowd into which I can disappear. …

Newton County, Mississippi, 1874

She’d been daydreaming again, that was the trouble. Mama always said someday her future would pass her by while she was lollygagging, and Exah hated it when Mama was right. She knew her brother J. J. was coming home today, and just possibly bringing his friend Jesse Smith to stay, and she’d planned to be scrubbed and changed into her clean dress and greeting them in the front hall, fresh as a peach.

It was hard being the last child left at home. Not that she was a child anymore. She was nineteen — perfectly old enough to be moving on into a home of her own. But that required a husband. Plenty of young men had come calling, of course. Poor as they were, her people were better off than most, and the local families would have been pleased to have a son married into the (comparatively) prosperous Haralsons. But the suitors thus far were all farm boys, most of whom she’d known since they were runny-nosed toddlers, and whom she couldn’t imagine staring at across the kitchen table in some ramshackle farmhouse for the rest of her life. …

I took my first yoga class 17 years ago, and it’s been an on-again off-again part of my life ever since. Yoga helped me through two pregnancies, and it’s been something I’ve returned to repeatedly when my mind or body needed a reset. But I’ve never been able to muster the discipline to make it a daily habit. That is, until I shattered my wrist in the midst of a global pandemic.

Let me explain.

It was April, one month into lockdown, and my family was taking an evening walk. It was one of the many improvised entertainments we’d created to fill our suddenly strangely empty schedules. My teenage daughter had brought along her skateboard, and in a moment of hubris I asked her for a turn. This should have registered as a mistake before I’d even stepped on the board — I am notoriously clumsy and my lifelong aversion to physical risk had left me completely unfamiliar with anything in the skateboard family. …

It’s December, which means it’s my traditional time of year for browsing through office supply stores and websites in search of the perfect planner. Maybe one with stickers, or inspirational quotes? Maybe one that would lay flat on my desk, or with a rubber band to hold it closed in my bag? Maybe a weekly layout would work best, or maybe I needed more space for each day? Maybe if I had a budget section, or a place for lists?

The reality is, I never found the mystical, elusive planner that would do everything I needed it to do. I wanted something flexible, but also structured. I wanted a place to record the things I needed to do, and also the things I had done. I wanted to be able to access information easily, but the preprinted pages never had exactly the right fields or format. …

Two years ago this month, I saw Billie Eilish perform live at the 9:30 Club, a space her fame was already outgrowing. The club was set up for maximum capacity, and she performed two shows back to back in an effort to meet the overwhelming demand. I was already a fan of her music, thanks to the influence of my teenage daughter, but that night I was utterly captivated by her energy on stage. …

At this point in history, being an evangelist for any type of social media is, I realize, deeply problematic. From the various ways social media and its misuse has threatened our democracy, to the way kids are finding new ways to bully one another online, social media in general is experiencing something of a reckoning. And while I do acknowledge its many ills for society at large, I am, and always have been, a total sucker for online community in all its forms.

My own history with online social networks began with BBS’s — Bulletin Board Systems — that you had to dial into with a 2400-baud modem. I tied up the family phone line for hours as a teenager, making friends with other kids, sharing song lyrics, arguing about politics. I was enchanted by how easily we were able to share important ideas — especially for someone like me who was far more articulate in writing than speaking. This was a text-based age — no one even had a digital camera, let alone one attached to a cellular network — so there was something about our interactions that seemed to transcend the image-obsessed early-90s world around us. …

Well-meaning moms, we need to talk.

During Pride month, I saw quite a few of you sharing memes that were variations of “Dear LGBTQ youth: If your family isn’t accepting of your identity, I’m your Mom now. Drink your water, get some sleep, I love you.” Even celebrity moms were doing it. Cute, right? So sweet!

I loved seeing so many women in my social media feeds sharing messages of support for LGBTQ+ youth, but something about this particular meme rubbed me the wrong way. It took me a while to figure out why I didn’t want to re-post it.

Here’s the thing. I know you mean well. I know you want to affirm these kids and let them know that you are an ally, a safe person for them to come to. This is awesome, and so needed. …

Fiction

No one recognized what was happening at first. With the state of the world, no one was particularly surprised or alarmed. People had begun to burst into tears on the sidewalk, dissolve into sobs in the midst of a sales meeting, a first date, a ride on the subway. And who could blame them, really? Even my relentlessly cheerful neighbor — the kindergarten teacher — had been openly weeping in front of the mailboxes in the lobby of our building, and I barely noticed.

It took a while before authorities recognized that quite a lot of people were crying, quite a lot of the time. Supermarkets were restocking tissues twice as often. Boxes of Kleenex began appearing at checkout counters and on restaurant tables. The practice of carrying handkerchiefs was suddenly back in vogue. The world was responding and adapting long before anyone understood what was going on. …