I spotted Queen Anne’s lace this week beside an old shed and stopped to take a picture. Years ago, I would have picked a bunch.

I recently watched “The Four Seasons” and found myself unexpectedly identifying with the woman who had become, perhaps, a little fixated on a toddler. Which led me to an uncomfortable question: Am I baby crazy?

This morning, I handed her another teddy bear graham cracker. It dances a wobbly performance in her sweet little fingers—then it’s popped into her mouth, crunched up by her back teeth, she’s just discovered. Later, I was listening to an interview with Jon Stewart and Graham Plattner, who is running for the Maine State Senate. Somewhere between the two, the graham cracker and the interview, my brain made one of those connections that don’t really matter, except that it does. W

“Ha! #47. That was a good one,” we’d laugh. That is one of the jokes my siblings and I throw out when we surround a kitchen island, sharing stories. We loved and still do, telling and listening to our repeated funny stories, especially if a newcomer enters the circle. But if it were just us, we’d joke we’d only have to say a number, like 47, as if we all knew what story it was and would all chuckle. Yesterday, I checked in by text with an old friend I had not spoken with in