Home from the Navy, I started school at Greenville College in my hometown of Illinois. I’d been out of high school for four years, but my high school headmaster, Mr. Gardner, invited me to a Valentine’s day dance party at school. The thought of seeing my former teachers was exciting. So I agreed.

When Friday came, I cleaned up, dressed up and drove to the high school gym. I chatted with my teachers and approached Mr. Gardner to thank him before leaving. Just then, the band started playing and a young girl stood up to sing. One look at and I was crazy—I had never seen such a beautiful girl!

I asked Mr. Gardner who she was, and he answered, “That’s Marilyn Riley, Cut Riley’s daughter.” I was shocked to say the least. They lived just around the corner from me. I walked across the gym floor to introduce myself, “Hi, I’m Jack Joseph.”

“I know who you are,” was her not-too-friendly response.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked. “No! I’m working,” she shot back.

“Can I call you next week for a movie date?” I asked. “No,” was her response.

For the next month I phoned, trying to set up a date. She always had the same answer: No. then one rainy afternoon in March as I was driving home after basketball practice, I saw Marilyn, walking with no umbrella, no raincoat, no hat. I pulled alongside her and asked if she needed a ride, half expecting her to say no. instead, she stepped over the roadside and sat down on the seat next to me. It was only a few blocks to her house, but after pulling into her driveway we talked for 45minutes. It was magic from then on.

Kyra Peralte thought keeping a diary during the pandemic (流行病) might help her sort out her feelings. In April 2020, the mother of two in Montclair, New Jersey, now 46, started writing about the challenges of work, marriage and motherhood during a global crisis. She invited women from near and far to fill the notebook with their own pandemic tales.She named the project The Traveling Diary.

Peralte created a website for people to add their names to the queue. Each person gets to keep the diary for three days and fill as many pages as she wishes. Then she is responsible for mailing it to the next person, whose address Peralte provides. So far, more than 2, 000 women from 30 countries have joined in.

The diary reached Colleen Martin in Florham Park, New Jersey, in November 2020. “I had just recently lost my brother. By the time I actually got it and wrote in it, it was much more of a relief,” she says. Adding to the diary, she says, helped her look for meaning and “the growth and development that occurs in terrible times.”

Martin shipped off the diary to the next person, and Dior Sarr, 35, received it at her home in Toronto just before the new year. “I wrote about my ambitions(抱负), my goals and how I wanted to step into the new year, ” she says, “It felt meaningful to pass on something so personal. It felt like these were women that I had known even though I didn’t know them at all.”

Like many of the women who wrote in her diary, Peralte feels a strong bond with the people who filled its pages, none of whom she would have otherwise known. Her idea, Peralte says, has had a great effect on her and, she hopes, the other women who were part of it.

Our youngest daughter can be stubborn about receiving gifts, and I told her so.

“Where do you think I get it from?” she asked.

“I’m not stubborn when it comes to receiving gifts,” I said. “I used to be but not now.”

She has a birthday coming up and we want to get her some new cowboy boots.

Cowboy boots aren’t cheap, but we want to do something special and get her something she could use and enjoy for years to come.

But my daughter is pushing back, saying she’s happy with her current boots-which are old and worn-out.

I push back, she pushes back, and we become locked in a mother-daughter match over stubbornness and how much is too much to spend on a special gift.

She thinks my husband and I do too much for her. I used to think the same thing about my parents—my parents weren’t rich, but they were generous.

They kept saying they enjoyed giving me gifts, but all I could think about was how much money they were wasting on me.

Years ago, I mentioned to a friend that I thought my mother overdid it when it came to buying gifts for her children.

My friend, closer to my mothers age than mine, looked at me and said, “Who are you to tell your mother what she can do?”

I wanted to argue with her, but I didn’t. I didn’t fully understand it then but I understand it now—now that I’m a grandmother myself.

The longer you live, the more you see how often things go wrong.

Marriages fail, friendships break down， family members become estranged, and accidents and illnesses cut lives short.

There is a brokenness that fills many of our lives.

So, when you see life going well, families working hard and growing strong, you want to celebrate.

It took a lot of time for me to understand that giving is an expression of joy, as much as it is an expression of love, understand where my daughter is coming from, but I also understand where my parents were coming from—a place of pure and simple joy celebrating those moments when life goes well.