“It fits with all kinds of metaphors,” she told me. “A snake sheds its skin, it lives close to the earth, things like that.”

The word “shed” hit me like a lightning bolt. As soon as she said it, I knew I’d found my word for the year.

It’s a fun word to say. Try it. “Oligarch.”

You might even use it as the name for that fat cat that slinks around the shadowy darkness of your back yard: “Oh, there’s Ollie Gark again. Back by that empty bird nest, just past that tuft of bunny fur on the lawn. Sneaky little guy, getting fatter every time I see him.”

Last weekend I sat in the very last row of a darkened auditorium, weeping at the sound of a finale to a holiday concert.

No, it’s not Santa’s arrival that I find my heart a-flutter for. It’s not the Star of Bethlehem or midnight madness sales or Bing Crosby film reruns. “It’s a Wonderful Life” would have been a good guess, but it’s not that either.

It’s The Arrival of The Letter that has me all goose-pimply.

See, every year about this time I find a holiday letter in the mailbox from friends I have known for many years.

Back in November, finishing up Dad’s birthday cake at my sister’s large dining room table, we reminisced about our childhoods. Many of my sister’s memories are from the years before I was even born, so listening to her stories is like hearing a story of a mythical land I’ve never visited. Because I was born when she was 12, I wasn’t around for one of her favorite stories about Dad: the time he heroically snuck back into their old house, which was being demolished, to retrieve a light fixture from her old bedroom.

That turkey you want to roast? Just buy the right bird, season it according to the recipe, check the temperature and the time, and you’ll be fine.

That deck you want to add to the back porch? Just set the foundation to code, buy the right lumber and screws, measure twice and cut once, and you’ll be fine.

That saying runs through my mind these days, as I take my high school daughter to tour prospective colleges. For one day, she tries each campus on like an outfit, checking to see if it’s the right fit.

She leaves our house as a child, but when we get to these campuses — with sprawling quads and stately architecture — she is transformed into an adult, or rather a small seedling of an adult.

To be clear, I found the Empire team all to be good people when they came to rip out the carpets in my house and replace them with laminate flooring. Those weary, well-weathered carpets were long overdue to be replaced, and just watching the Empire team pull them up made me want to call a hazmat team as a backup.

The laminate they expertly installed the same day is beautiful, and when they were finished it made me happy to stroll past all three de-carpeted rooms in my house and gaze in wonder at how much more inviting those rooms now look.

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.

If you’ve endured colonoscopies before and never want to hear another gruesome word about it, I urge you to turn the page, enjoy the rest of your chocolate pudding cup, and read the Dining Duo column, which always examines meals as entrées and never as exits.

If you’ve never had a colonoscopy, consider this a blow-by-blow public service message.

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.

I thought it was a logical question to ask, because if there is such an age, I must surely be creeping up on it — if I hadn’t already slid past it.

I’ll admit that much of my love for fall is tied up in nostalgia, in memories that I will never relive again. Gone are the piles of elm leaves raked into the street and set ablaze, into which we kids would toss apples and potatoes, and then rake them from the ashes to eat, charred husks and all.

Although I hadn’t ridden a bike through most of my adulthood, pretty much every morning for the past couple years I take a ten-or-twelve-mile jaunt into the countryside, where I converse with the corn and cows if they’re in the mood to listen. Whatever trials await me later, I always find a sense of peace peddling the pavement at the start of the day.

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.

That’s what my son called it when he phoned me to ask: “How you doin’ against the ‘vid?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him — three times — what he said: “Are you saying ‘vid’? What the hell is a ‘vid’?” Something in the corner of my mind hinted that it might be a term having to do with gambling, but I hadn’t placed any bets lately.

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.

I freely confess that I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid. My bike has flashing lights fore and aft, I wear a red helmet and sunglasses, and I’m dressed in either orange, yellow, or fluorescent green.

Now, I don’t want to imply that any cyclist on the road is an idiot like me.

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.

While other birds are beautiful in some gaudy, outlandish way — like cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, or even robins — the tiny wren’s beauty lies in its simple, classical, dappled brown look, like a tiny refined Englishman in a tweed suit.

Its song, however, is anything but simple. During mating season, the male will stake out his territory atop a likely birdhouse and fill the air with trills and whistles whose complexity would make any classical composer envious.