How might you answer this question? I think it’s beautiful that each of us may answer this question very differently. The cause which stirs your heart may be different than the one that stirs mine. Each of us was born with our own ache, a yearning to see justice, rightness, in one particular longing of humanity. Sometimes the ache seems to come out of nowhere, like we were born with it, like it came hardwired in our very being.

I don’t think she slept all the way through the night, but she at least had some long enough stretches that I woke feeling rested. Peet picks her up from her crib and carries her across our small home to where I am lying cozy in our bed. She nurses and we snuggle in bed. She rolls around and climbs over pillows while we wait for her dad to come back from the store. She is wearing my favorite pajamas of hers, the really soft ones with the tiny brown flowers.

Write a poem about how it feels to fall in love.

I think the thing people most often get wrong about me is my knowledge of books. I had a conversation recently with my dear friend Melody, who is also a reader and a writer, about this very topic. People often mistake my love affair with literature as a vast ocean of expertise, which I simply do not have. They assume that I have read every book ever written, or, at the very least, that I have read “the good stuff”.

I am reminded of a conversation I had once with a coworker who became a close friend. Juniper had lived many lives before landing in the role of part-time circulation librarian, serving as a priest for many years, working some time as a therapist who wore very expensive suits, and running nonprofit organizations. Something like fifty years my senior, he taught me a lot about life and people. Once, we were talking about privilege, mainly centered on the racial sort, when he pointed out that I had an additional kind of privilege that I was unaware of.

I can remember a few. There is photographic evidence of me attending a career day at preschool dressed as a homemaker. I also wanted to be a princess. My husband wanted to be a superhero. Good thing one of us is realistic. There was a time that I wanted to be a teacher. I think I was just fascinated with kindergarten play centers, which seemed adorable and very fun. I am still delighted by these sorts of things, like reading nooks and play kitchens and sensory bins.

On Halloween night of 2022, with my husband at my side, I pulled my 40-weeks pregnant belly uphill through our neighborhood. The main street is legendary for its trick-or-treating, and it was the perfect night for some hopefully labor-inducing walking. In a black t-shirt dress and white sneakers, I walked confidently, though not quickly, uphill, past hundreds of costumed trick-or-treaters rushing ghost-covered lawns.