As I continued chopping, he described that during band rehearsal, he wanted his students to “let go” and get a louder, fuller, freer sound.

“I told them, ‘I need you to care while also not caring,’” he said.

I stopped chopping. My knife hovered mid-air, while I tried to make sense of this phrase.

This got my attention. The only other Surgeon General’s advisory I can think of is the one on cigarette cartons. But parenting? Is it true that parenting is hazardous to our health?

I became a parent 28 years ago. Four children later, with three of them launched and the youngest finishing high school, I find myself reviewing and pondering the many, many benchmarks I’ve witnessed as a parent to my children.

Of all the things that can be canceled or delayed or rescheduled — a meeting, a dentist appointment, even a tax deadline — a storm moving in, chased by thunder and lightning, refuses to bend to anyone else’s schedule. Between the curtains on the window over my sink is when I first see the trees swaying wildly in the wind, then notice that the late afternoon sun is lighting up a huge thunderhead cloud.

The clothes are from my friend Jennifer’s closet. She called us over because she was ready to clear some space from her ample wardrobe and wanted us, her friends with similar figures, to get first dibs.

At a certain point, I was trying on a cute little summer dress, and I hardly recognized the woman in the mirror.

Tonight, our first concert is in Prague. We have rehearsed, but now that the performance is drawing near, tensions are high. It’s hot. The performance hall we are in does not seem to be air conditioned.

We’ve warmed up our voices, but there are still a few measures to be worked out.

Like most pet owners, we subject our poor Baxter to many nicknames. Some are run-of-the-mill like “Puppy” or “Puppy-Schmup.” We call him “Booxie” and “Booxinator.” On days when Baxter is freshly brushed and walks with a certain swagger, I refer to him as “Lord Buxton.” This is always pronounced in an awful English accent for absurd reasons that I can’t explain.

For pages that existed in 2013, 38% are not available today. Even 8% of webpages from just one year ago are no longer available.

This phenomenon is called “Digital Decay.”

Sure, we’ve all been on a webpage, clicked a link, and gotten the dreaded “404” error: Page not found.

When I went away to college, I lived in a dorm named after Rev. Niebuhr, who was a pastor, theologian, and ethicist. My father wrote me letters addressed to Niebuhr Hall, and he would tuck a copy of the prayer he had clipped from a church bulletin.

I know myself to be an introvert, but I’m always a little bit shocked, on these rare occasions when I’m left alone, at how much of an introvert I am.

For four days, I happily went to work, came home, walked the dog, then attempted to do some laundry or sorting or cleaning before I eventually gave in to the temptation at hand: a novel I was reading, a limited series on Hulu I had been meaning to get to, or a podcast about a juicy Hollywood scandal.

We knew they were coming, but it didn’t make it any less jarring to see the tiny holes in the soil where they had suddenly emerged after their 17-year-long buffet of tender tree roots. They’re not a welcome sight for many, and cautious homeowners along neighborhood streets have carefully wrapped young saplings in white nets as a way of protecting trees in their infancy from the attack of cicadas.

My daughter, tall and slender, stands at the apex of most of the group pictures. She is taller than the other girls, so she tips her head slightly, not out of shyness, but in deference to the height difference.

It is wild to me that over a week ago, we picked up two strangers from the airport. Ten days later, tears rolled down my cheeks as I said goodbye as they left for their flights home. I will miss them, my new Italian daughters.

The sky has that expectant pink hue to it. We are also expectant, having risen early from our little camping trailer to greet the sunrise. This was a planned thing, involving Google searches of when the sun would rise, earlier bedtime the night before, and several alarms set.

I am accustomed to a house filled with voices and noise: laughter, instruments being practiced, “What’s for dinner?” being shouted, or the shower running for far too long. I’m used to hearing footsteps overhead, before they recede across the ceiling the way a shooting star appears in the corner of our eye, then disappear just as suddenly, leaving us to wonder if we only imagined it.

The AP Stylebook is a substantial volume for journalists, students, and writers that, to me at least, deserves its own podium, open to the page about nonessential clauses, marked with a rich leather bookmark, a single light trained on its text.

As soon as Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters carrying a sink (the caption to the video read, “Walking into Twitter HQ. Let that sink in,”) it was clear that Musk was more concerned with crafting Dad-jokey quips than he was about making the platform better, or at the very least keeping it clear from hate speech and disinformation.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter X, it’s been steadily losing users, who are tired of the arbitrary changes and lack of content moderation.

Cats are so much easier than dogs, and Chicken and Waffles were no exception. They would meet me each day at the door by meowing and walking purposefully toward their food bowls, where they would sit and stare meaningfully from the bowl, to me, then back to the bowl again.

In my estimation, it’s no exaggeration to say that Mr. Band Director’s job has two primary components: 1) leading and educating his students in pursuit of excellent musicianship; and 2) moving equipment. He wraps extension cords as expertly as a cowboy throwing a lasso.

Long after the other plants in our garden faded and settled in for a winter nap, the rosebush on the southeast side of our house continued to grow and stretch toward our bedroom window so that when we awoke and pulled up the shades, the palest pink, delicate petals rested serenely with faces open wide, patiently waiting for us to begin our morning.