I was at work on the morning of September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I was sitting in my office in Kingston, New York, a town located about 90 miles north of Manhattan, when a colleague told me about it. I’d initially assumed it was a small plane that had flown into the building by mistake.

Eighteen minutes later a second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. …

It took me 19 years to love my house and now I may lose it.

I don’t know when the ash trees died. By my estimate, it was at least eight years ago, maybe longer. That means we let them stand, dead, for nearly a decade because we could not afford to remove them.

This past spring, I finally called the town to see if there was anything they could do. Two of the trees were precariously balanced near the road. I could scarcely afford to have them both removed, but luckily I didn’t have to come up with the money. …

An email from my daughter’s school arrived in my inbox at 1:19 pm on October 1st that took my breath away. It was an unsigned announcement notifying parents that, due to severe budget cuts, all students in the district must resume in-person classes on November 9th.

This contradicted what we’d been told (repeatedly) since September. Namely, that her high school would remain completely virtual for the entirety of the 2020–2021 school year.

I’d tried to process the information without panicking and, after reading the email several times, found a link at the very bottom that read, simply, “Remote Instruction Continuation.” …

At the height of her popularity, Erma Bombeck’s column, At Wit’s End appeared in more than 900 newspapers and was read by an audience of 30 million people. Her pieces were funny and poignant. They shed light on the day-to-day drudgery of being a housewife at a time when the national conversation about gender roles was shifting.

She started writing her column in the late sixties and she quickly became a household name, achieving tremendous success throughout the seventies and eighties.

She would go on to write fifteen books, some of which were collections of her many essays. I read several of them and laughed frequently. Bombeck had the ability to turn suburban life into something fascinating — and funny! Her first book, The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, was published in 1978 and became a bestseller. …

My road bike is eleven years old. I bought it at a tiny bike shop in Kingston, NY. At about $1200, the bike remains the most expensive piece of exercise gear I’ve ever purchased. That year, I also purchased a magnetic indoor trainer so I could ride my bike indoors during the winter. I can clamp the rear axle of my bike into the trainer which holds the bike upright and applies pressure on the wheel, allowing me to ride in place.

I accumulated these items and a bunch of other equipment in 2011 and 2012 — the peak of my “cycling years.” I started riding on my 38th birthday in May 2009. I’d joined Weight Watchers that year and I needed to do some type of exercise that I didn’t hate. …

The desire to write a book tends to hit me before I have any solid ideas about how to get started. I want to write a novel about grief. I want it to touch on spirituality and faith in ways that make sense to me, an atheist who wants to believe (must believe) that our consciousness lives on once we die. I want to write it this year.

This must be a book that incorporates magical realism, but it must also be a tale of self-discovery. …

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a year. It had months and weeks and endless days and, though it didn’t seem like we’d ever make it this far, it’s about to end. Misplaced optimism about the upcoming year is a ritual that runs deep — like decorating Christmas trees and gathering with friends and family for holiday dinners. Setting New Year’s resolutions is woven into the fabric of American life.

Of course, this year we couldn’t easily gather and there was a Christmas tree shortage, so we had to make due with some alternatives. My family scored a tree, but only after we spent a couple of hours wandering the ravaged fields of our local tree farm — a place we’ve visited every December since 2016. The farm had been picked clean, so we left empty-gloved, and ended up paying too much for a spindly tree that managed to hang on to most of its needles until Christmas Day. …

It’s the season of joy and platitudes, a time when we may reflexively begin or end our correspondence with phrases, “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas.” But in this most unusual year, when so many have lost so much, it’s hard to be happy. There is tremendous loss, fear, and anxiety associated with the virus. At this point in the pandemic, if you haven’t lost someone or something directly, then you probably know someone who has.

Even so, it can be difficult to break the habit of forcing holiday spirit into every conversation. I get it. Before my daughter died, I didn’t think twice about wishing someone a Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah or brightly chirping Happy New Year! …