I’m learning that planning a wedding is a lot like that. Everyone wants to know about The Dress and The Cake and The Flowers. But the moments that really mean the most to me are the least impressive ones to talk about.

It’s not being able to sleep the night he proposes; not being able to stop grinning stupidly at your hand.

It’s announcing your engagement to your coworkers in your morning meeting by keeping your hand in your pocket until it’s your turn to speak, then casually throwing out, “Oh, and this happened this weekend,” as you hold your hand up. And other coworkers’ reactions, including but not limited to speedwalking past your desk, grinding to a halt, and yelling, “Get the fuck out!” in disbelief. (Only in journalism would that be a congratulatory statement.)

It’s sitting down on your first Valentine’s together to try to figure out how to start planning your wedding (and then, when you decide to start with the guest list, drawing crazy doodles around the guest totals as you go out of sheer boredom with list-making).

It’s flying 2,000 miles to try on wedding dresses with your mom and your best friends, and having every store hand you dresses six sizes too big because that’s all they have. Your poor best friend takes this in stride, and helps you dive head-first into mound after mound of gathered, blinged-out satiny death traps. But she doesn’t care: in fact, she keeps whispering that you need to try more of them on, because you only get to do this once so you might as well.

It’s writing “Will you be my bridesmaid?” notes in the bathroom and stuffing them into lockets (trying desperately to remember which name you put in which locket), because you didn’t have time to do it before your friends came over and you won’t see them again for weeks. And your matron of honor not being able to get her locket open at all.

It’s your mom planting hundreds of flower seeds, fingers crossed they bloom in time for you to carry.

It’s your dad so determined to find a good place for the rehearsal dinner that he doesn’t care it’s not the bride’s parents’ responsibility. Maybe, you suspect, he just wants to go sample barbecue.

It’s the determination you and he have to pound out the registry. So you each grab a computer, and focus like hell until he starts playing old Joe Diffie songs and you can’t help singing to them, exclaiming at each one, “I didn’t realize this was Joe Diffie!” And at the end of the night, you have some bedding and some curtains and some kitchen utensils and John Deere Green stuck in your head.

It’s spending nearly two hours in DSW, trying on every pair of heels that *might* work with your dress (which you saw once, for fifteen minutes, a month ago). When you finally decide on the pair that is the comfiest, prettiest, and least expensive, you realize as you’re buying them that they are in fact Disney Princess “Glass Slipper Collection” heels. Your prince is coming whether you freaking like it or not.

It’s getting your invitations from the printer, opening them with him, and reading them together, sensing him smiling ear-to-ear behind you. “They look fantastic, Heather Jay, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Keith,” he says, hand on your shoulder.

No, I don’t know who’s baking the cake or where the flowers are coming from, or even where I’m staying the night before. None of that *really* matters. What really matters is how much I make of each of these moments, because these are the moments that life itself is made of. The wedding? It will be a pretty awesome day. But it’s just a day; just a few hours. It changes everything and yet also very little. What is meaningful to me now will still be meaningful to me afterward, and if I let those small, lovely moments pass as insignificant, then I probably will continue to miss the little beautiful moments life holds for me in years to come.

Bike season has been promising to come for several weeks, doing a titillating sort of dance where it almost appears, then hiding again behind thunderstorms and chilly fronts. In the last couple of days, it has finally shown itself. During the dance, however, I got impatient and threw on my down jacket, fleece gloves and windbreaker — you know, spring riding clothes — and biked to work. My determination and impatience got me my first flat tire since I bought my bike a year ago.

It was a slow leak, so I finished the commute to work. By the time I came out, however, the tire was totally flat. The next two weeks were cold and rainy, so I left the bike in the Trib’s cage, deflated (the tire physically and myself mentally). But then the weather started to turn. Getting on the bus on a beautiful 73-degree morning seemed almost sinful, and definitely germ-laden. David took pity on me and lent me a bike pump, patch kit and tire spoons so I could patch my sad tire. Victory was close at hand, I thought.

When I got the tire off, I couldn’t find the hole.

So I took the tire on the bus with me.

Upon ranting about this to Drew, he told me about the apparently common trick of submerging a partially inflated inner tube in water to find the leak. GENIUS, I thought. I will do this right away.

“Right away” meaning two days later. I filled my bathtub with water, wrestled the inner tube off, and carefully checked inch-by-inch, not realizing that when I hit the hole, a veritable geyser of bubbles would shoot forth. It was tiny, no larger than a pinprick. I already could feel the wind in my face and the bugs in my teeth as I popped open the patch kit, certain I would have a functional tire for the next morning.

No rubber cement. Lots of patches, and a bit of sandpaper, but no rubber cement with which to affix them.

I pulled the tire out, dried it, and looked at my bathtub, now covered in bike grime for nothing. I left the tire against my bathroom wall as a monument to bitter failure, and I determined to go on a hunt for rubber cement the next day.

I found the cement at the end of a long line at Johnny Sprockets, a local bike shop. I practically skipped home, clutching my purchase in my soon-to-be-bruised-and-grimy hand.

By now, the drill was familiar: Stem cap off. Tire spoons on, tire off. Mind the stem. Pull out the tube — gentle, now. Inflate a little, not too much. There are the bubbles. Get the kit! I dutifully slathered a layer of rubber cement on the tire after sanding it, waiting for the cement to dry before I applied the patch. It seemed incredibly secure, so I began the struggle of getting the ensemble back together.

And then I had a brilliant thought. I should fully inflate the tire tonight so I can tell tomorrow if the patch worked. So I did. I inflated it to rock hardness. I couldn’t help grinning at myself and my skinned knuckles. Tomorrow — or the next day, or whenever spring comes back for good — I’ll ride for sure.

I pulled the pump nozzle off of the stem.

With a loud whoosh, as the air found the new gaping hole, the stem came with it.

I’ll be taking the bus tomorrow.

Last Friday, I flew home to California to go wedding dress shopping, a concept that I was about as comfortable with as a cat is a bath. I know, logically, that I should enjoy the ride. I only get to do this once! But social events are inherently not a Heather kind of thing, especially where she is the center of attention. It feels inherently selfish to pester bridesmaids with dress ideas and blather endlessly about plans to my poor groom-to-be. (Drew is incredibly patient.)

However, I was very excited about one aspect of dress hunting. My aunt had shipped her mother’s wedding dress to us. She didn’t know if it were in wearable condition, if it were too small or too large for me, or if the veil were still with it, but said I could use it however I saw fit. When I arrived home, it was sitting in a corner of my room, still in the UPS box. I was a little slow and hesitant opening it, because I didn’t know what to expect. The only time I’d seen the dress was in an old black-and-white photo of my grandparents that used to sit on a table in our den. All I remembered was lace: lots of lace.

Unpacking the box was a bit like discovering hidden treasure. We (my bridesmaids, Sarah and Keri) opened the veil first. The tulle crumbled, but the lace was intact, as was the beaded tiara-like headpiece. The veil is probably cathedral-length. We pulled it around me, just like the picture of my grandparents. Dad snapped a picture on his cell phone and texted it to his sister. It’s incredible to think what my grandmother would have thought of technology.

The dress was still in its original box, from a “frock” shop in Cicero, IL. The address — on Cermak — was hand-scrawled on the front. “Bill enclosed,” it said. (Mom later looked up the shop. Their “better” dresses started at $10.95.) Though the bill was no longer present, what was there was unexpectedly great. One invitation, dated April 1940, for my grandmother’s wedding in Chicago. (I had no idea when I moved here that I had such family ties to Chicagoland.) One wedding certificate, elaborate and bigger than a legal-sized piece of paper, decorating with a scene of cherubs and Biblical characters. Confusingly, it was from the Roman Catholic church.

“Hey, Dad, your mom and dad weren’t Catholic, were they?” He came over to look at it. Then I noticed the names were wrong.

“Who is…someone Wallace?”

It turned out to be my great-grandparents’ wedding certificate. “‘Til death do us part,” read the banner across the bottom. It is sort of odd to think about how long they’ve both been gone; how fast life flies by in the grand scheme of things. Were they happy together? What did they learn about being married? What made them laugh? What made them angry? Did he leave his socks on the floor? Was she a good cook?

And then there was the dress itself. Heavy ivory satin, beaded at the top with a cathedral-length train. Sarah and Keri were all too happy to help me get it on. The sleeves were far too short and I couldn’t move my shoulders. The gown was hemmed for my five-foot-one grandmother, and my jeans (why I was still wearing jeans, I don’t know) peeked out the bottom. The bosom was three sizes too large.

Mom said I should see myself in her full-length mirror. I walked gingerly down the hallway, Sarah and Keri lifting my train “like Kate Middleton.” One of them started humming the wedding march; Mom asked if it were a funeral dirge. Somehow, suddenly the wedding march began to sound a great deal like a certain piece of Star Wars music…

I decided, after dress shopping the next day, not to wear my grandmother’s dress. Heavy satin and California’s Augusts don’t mesh, and the alterations that would be required would be substantial. But being able to touch it and try it on and see for myself what I had only seen in a hand-colored photo made me feel somehow close to the woman who wore it in 1940. I never knew her, but I know that she must have danced quite a lot in her gown, from where there were streaks on the train. I know that her cascade of flowers scratched the satin on her midriff. I know that she was ever-so-careful with the delicate lace on her veil. I know she was smaller, but built well (no doubt do to some of her mother’s good Czech cooking). And I know that though she has been gone since the 1960s, part of her will always live on through my dad’s stories, his fried cauliflower, and a lovely old dress from what surely must have been one of the happiest days of her life.

As for me? Instead of chopping up her dress, I found one that I would much rather alter. Maybe someday someone will try it on and think about who I might have been.

The keys to the condo I thought I would never close on.

Yet here I am, packing once more, sticking all the little pieces of my life into oddly-shaped corners, hoping they’ll survive the trip to my new condo in Edgewater.

My condo. When did I become an adult?

There’s the little plastic Barbie tumbler Mom and I bought at Salvation Army years ago. She sent it to me as a joke, and a little piece of home. I use it pretty much exclusively to punch holes in pieces of bread for cowboy eggs, a breakfast Dad used to make for us.

Then there are the glasses made out of wine bottles that I bought with Mom and Sarah at my favorite farmers market in Arizona. The Snow White coffee cups that Keri bought me for Christmas. A Lego version of the Sears Tower Dad and I bought to assemble the first time he came to visit me in Chicago. The little bottle of mustard seeds (among other spices and sauces) Brian gave me when he moved to DC. The vase that came with the roses my brother sent me one Valentine’s Day. My grandmother’s tablecloth. The nightstand I brought home on the bus. The lamp I brought home on the bus. The trunk I brought home on the bus. (I told Mom delivery was free.) The end table Drew drove home for me so I wouldn’t have to ride the bus with another piece of furniture. Diplomas. A letter of recommendation from Len Downie. The dressy work clothes that Mom and I bought the summer I interned at the Washington Post. (I wear T-shirts and jeans to work now.) The Indiana Jones whip I kept above my desk at the Collegian. The guitar that survived Scout camp. Journals full of memories, journals full of tears, journals full of years.

I’ve been in Chicago almost two years now. This tiny little studio has never really felt like home, but in some strange way, I’m going to miss it. I think a lot of it has to do with the realization that this is my last bachelorette pad. Even though Drew won’t move into the new condo until after we’re married, knowing it will happen is such a strange thought. (Judging from what he’s said on the topic, he’s having a hard time wrapping his mind around it, too.) Part of me wonders how well I’ll be able to adjust to living with someone else, after being on my own for this long. Don’t get me wrong: I am absolutely thrilled about the idea of sharing life with him. (Not having to worry about how late it is when we say goodbye will be freaking wonderful.) But it’s a very new kind of chapter for me. I don’t know quite what to expect.

As I pack, I realize that I get to bring parts of all the old chapters with me. That’s an incredibly comforting thing.

We went ring shopping twice. He bought what he would have bought had we not gone shopping. And it's perfect.

“Do you feel like you’re in a place where you’re ready to be in a relationship?” he asked me. One of the things I love about him is that he wants to avoid assumptions, favoring clear communication instead. I considered a few moments before giving him the obvious answer.

Some people remember their first kiss with great fondness. For me, the first time he hugged me, that night on the bridge, will always be “the beginning.” It was an incredible feeling that I had finally arrived at a place I had been searching for. He wouldn’t kiss me until weeks later, but the joy in that hug must have shined through: Both of us cracked up moments later when a passing car honked in celebration at us.

***

Last Friday was the end of a rough week. (Project launch weeks usually are.) I was sleep-deprived, hormonal and mentally fried, but feeling better after dinner (Drew had suggested Chinatown, but I wanted tacos) and frozen yogurt (Drew told me about the bond market and I teased him for wanting to eat ice cream in the dead of winter). I expected to feel even better after he dropped me off at my apartment, because I intended to fall asleep immediately.

Instead, when we climbed in his car, he said, “Do you feel like going for a ride?”

In the seven months I’ve been dating Drew, he has never suggested we go for an aimless drive.

He’s going to do it. He’s going to ask. He’s going to do it TONIGHT. No, no, no he’s not. Just calm down. You’ll be disappointed if you’re wrong. Everything’s fine. Maybe he really does just want to go for a drive.

“Why the heck not? Beats sitting in front of my building and freezing like we usually do,” I laughed, my heart pounding a mile a minute.

He headed south on Lake Shore Drive, past Soldier Field, then west. He was heading to Chinatown.

He pulled over on the 18th Street bridge and asked me if I remembered standing here back in the summer.

“That was a great night,” I said. We’re sitting in the car. He can’t propose to me while we’re sitting in the car! That would just be weird! “Do you mind if we get out? The view is so pretty, but I can’t really see it from here.”

The snow on the ground was at its iciest. We stood there on the bridge, both shivering uncontrollably, both pretending nothing abnormal was going on at all. As if the weather were not inconvenient enough, I am afraid that I made setting any kind of mood very difficult for him, as I had defaulted to my natural nervous tic of cracking jokes left and right (I am so smooth).

Finally, in a pause, he said, “I still remember some of the conversations we had that night verbatim. This is where I asked you to be my girlfriend, and I since I had pretty good luck with that, I figured, what better place to ask you to be my wife?”

I don’t know what sort of look I had on my face, but it prompted him to add, “Seriously!” as he pulled a box out of his pocket and opened it.

Silence. I stared at the ring, stunned. I want to say yes! But there’s nothing for me to say yes to! He hasn’t actually asked me anything! This realization was enough to break my frazzled brain. I looked back up at him, and down at the ring, and up at him, and down at the ring, and up at him. Finally, I blurted out, “You haven’t asked me a question yet!”

I clearly have no idea where the camera actually is.

The passing cars honked a chorus as he put the ring on my finger. Whether he was shaking from the cold or nerves, I couldn’t tell. I was shaking too.

We went for coffee afterward, because sleep was obviously not going to happen at that point. I teased him about not doing the one-knee bow.

“I meant to get down on one knee!” he said. “I didn’t get down on one knee?!”

We stayed until the 2 a.m. last call, talking about how relieved he was not to be carrying the ring around in his pocket any more, how the 3D Javascript rendering on diamond purchasing websites crashes most browsers, how strange it felt to use the word “fiance,” how natural it felt to be engaged.

“I figured it was about time I put my money where my mouth is,” he said.

***

I knew from the very beginning that there is something different about Drew. Talking with him is effortless. Silence is comfortable. He keeps up with my crazy lateral jumps in conversation — and is prone to the same sort of thinking himself. He is intellectually present in every moment, even when we were joking about the pope pooping in the woods. He seeks to learn from his mistakes and he embraces the fact that he needs God’s grace in his life. He can be goofy, serious, or brutally honest, but underneath it all, you know that he wants more than anything to do the Right Thing for the Right Reason. It was always obvious that he has a gigantic heart to match his towering stature. And somehow, somehow I don’t quite understand, he makes me a better person. I use that language with hesitation, because he doesn’t fill a hole in my life or make up for my character flaws. He’s not my “other half” or my “soulmate,” two ideas I have always found ridiculous. But when I look at how he runs his race, it makes me examine and adjust how I run my own. There’s a feeling of connection, based on honesty and openness, I didn’t know could exist. I am humbled by his selflessness and encouraged by his generosity. Does he have flaws? Of course. Am I going to hate his guts? At times. But there’s something about the idea of life with this guy that is reassuring where other relationships have been frightening. I don’t expect to be “in love” for very long at all, but if these things are even a small indication of the man God’s making him into, I am a blessed woman indeed.

Now if only I could get someone to plan the wedding for me.

The pianos at the Harold Washington Library remind me greatly of the old piano I grew up playing.

I loved that piano. I love it still. I grew up playing it: ragtime, Mozart, Brahms, finger exercises that I hated. I took lessons for about ten years from a local woman who taught music at the small public grammar school in town. I can still see her house in my mind. She hadn’t cleaned the place in a decade, easily. Dust as thick as your little finger on every surface. Sheet music piled to the ceiling on the bookshelves, the chairs, the floor. The same Christmas decorations that were up when I started taking lessons were still there when I stopped taking lessons. And the smell was a smell of old grease that permeated every piece of clothing I wore there.

When she played piano, none of that mattered. When she put her hands on the keys, the world was beautiful. And then it would be my turn.

“Count it: One-ee-and-ah-two-ee-and-ah-three!”

By the time I got to high school, lessons had faded from weekly to a couple times a month. But when my tiny church lost its pianist, I began playing hymns every week there. At first the concept was terrifying. I didn’t even like letting my own mother hear me play, let alone a room full of strangers. Strangely, I got to the point where I actually enjoyed performing.

And then the church hired a new music pastor, who switched the whole service to contemporary music. With college just beginning, I couldn’t devote the time to learning to play with a band, and he didn’t seem very willing to teach me.

The piano gave way to horseback riding and college newspaper business. The beautiful electronic Yamaha my parents had bought me sat in my room, ignored for the most part, though occasionally I would dig out the old hymnal and play through it longingly. When I started grad school, I took the keyboard with me, determined to renew my skills. Anyone who has been through grad school will find that last sentence incredibly amusing.

Finally, I wound up in Chicago, 2,000 miles away from my keys. For about eight months, I had no instruments at all. Then I brought my guitar out, just before I started dating my boyfriend. When he visited my apartment for the first time, he asked if I played. I laughed at him. He started teaching me, and I still practice with regularity. I expected the guitar to satiate the music hole in my spirit. Instead, it, combined with watching him play the piano so beautifully, made me long for a keyboard again. Drew kept trying to convince me to play his, but I turned him down again and again. It had been so very long.

Finally, one night, I promised him that the next time I visited his house, I would try to play if he provided me with sheet music. He held me to it in early December, providing me with lead sheets for Christmas music. I hemmed and hawed and picked the First Noel, a carol I’ve always loved.

I fumbled my way haltingly through the first few measures until my brain ground to a stop, humiliated. I sat at his beautiful piano, holding my head, hardly breathing, just trying not to cry. He sat down on the bench next to me and put his arm around me, and the dam burst and I excused myself to the bathroom, where I cried until my eyes were completely bloodshot. All those years I never thought I was any good, I never realized how good I actually was. I never appreciated the skill I had, or the talent that had been developed in me by others. I let it wither away and die. Out of the other room, I heard him playing, waiting for me, and cried more.

Finally he came looking for me, worried. I did my best to avoid eye contact and act like I was fine. I did a terrible job.

We ended up on the sofa, where he put his arm around me and tried to tell me all I needed was a little practice by myself where no one could hear me and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed.

“It will come back like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “You just need some time alone with a keyboard.”

“Where, Drew?” I asked impatiently. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my keyboard to Chicago for almost a year. It’s not going to happen any time soon.”

His answer was, “Someday soon you’ll have a piano to play.” I blew it off as him being his ever-optimistic self.

The night had left me extremely sad, even the next day. I remembered someone telling me that the Harold Washington Library in the South Loop had pianos in practice rooms. On a whim, I looked it up. Fifteen minutes on a bus one way from work. On a lunch break, that would leave me 20 minutes, give or take waiting for the bus, to play. It was something.

So I went. I went and I failed to let the librarian know I was playing in the practice room and made her very angry. But I played the First Noel. I played it again and again and again until I just couldn’t help but laugh with delight and disbelief that I was actually making a melody, as amateurish and simplistic as it was. I went back again the next day to play. And the next week.

The week after was busy, and I let it slide. I told no one, resolved that I would make it a habit before I mentioned it. Since I leave for California this Wednesday, I intended to get back to it in January.

Also because of my impending departure, Drew and I decided to exchange Christmas presents beforehand.

Eighty-eight real, weighted keys sitting in my living room.

He got me a keyboard.

He got me a genuine, honest-to-goodness, 88-key digital piano. I opened the sustain pedal first, and simply said, “You did not do what I think you did.”

He did. I was speechless. I still am, really. The keyboard is sitting in my window, and I have no words to describe how blown away I am by such a thoughtful gift. Perhaps that is because the proper gratitude can only be wordlessly expressed through music itself.

Once I woke up twenty minutes before I needed to be running A/V stuff at church. I hopped in a cab and made it there nine minutes before service.

No, that’s inaccurate. I am continually just in the nick of time for things. I’ll get to work two minutes before our morning meeting starts (at 9:30). I will underestimate my commute, though I have been making it for more than a year. My boyfriend texts me to say he’s in front of my building when he is five minutes away, so that I’m downstairs when he arrives.

I’ve tried everything: setting my watch fast, mentally setting my departure time ten minutes earlier than it needs to be, overestimating how long it will take me to cook dinner (go grocery shopping, do laundry, bike to church). During the two years my brother and I both attended Fresno State, my departure time — and subsequent excessive speeding on the freeway — drove him crazy. He’s always early for everything.

Oddly, or perhaps not odd at all, I find it much easier to manage time when I pray for help in that area. I obviously am incapable of handling it myself, and embracing that, rather than fighting it, seems to be the best answer. How does one harness time, after all?

When I don’t ask God’s help, though, He certainly has a sense of irony about it. Sometimes, like this morning, I will sprint two blocks in high heels and a dress, carrying a latte, to catch a bus whose timetable I looked up twenty minutes prior. I was headed to church.

Thanks to Elizabeth for capturing visually something to which a thousand words can't do justice.

It was, in retrospect, exactly what I expected the evening to be like.

I’d arrived at Kaitlen’s apartment three hours prior to help decorate for the surprise party her boyfriend had decided to throw her. When he asked me for help, I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that I’m a lousy party planner. So he bought cupcakes, and I attempted to get crepe paper to stick to the walls in a decorative manner. This was made far more difficult by my attempts to not stop every five seconds and pet the kitty at my feet.

As the guests arrived, we started trying to decide how to surprise her. (One friend’s idea, hiding in the shower, was promptly struck down. Another, all crowding around the door so that our faces were the first thing she saw upon opening the door, was vetoed in favor of the traditional, lights-out, everyone-yell-surprise tactic. It worked: She jumped six inches. And promptly brought out the box of tiaras.

I didn’t don one until I’d eaten an entire malted chocolate cupcake washed down with a shot of bourbon. It was a good party.

At AT&T Park, watching the game after the Giants secured a playoff spot. Anticlimactic, but a great excuse to be together.

You can perhaps understand my surprise when, on one of my visits home this spring, I found the San Francisco Giants playing at full volume on the family room TV. Even more shocking was when Mom started spouting off facts about players: that Brian Wilson (who?), the Giants’ closer (their what?), had had Tommy John surgery (doesn’t Tommy have to have his own surgery?) and would be out the rest of the season.

I assumed she was feigning an interest so she would have something to share with my brother, whose brain seems to have unlimited space for sports knowledge. But as the season went on, she started watching games even when he wasn’t home. She started explaining terms like “double play” to me. And then, somehow, for her birthday I got her tickets to the Giants at the Cubs. I’m still not entirely sure how THAT happened! (I did have to explain to her why I wasn’t about to hold a sign that said, “Gamer Babes from Fresno,” on it.)

However, I was all about the neon orange French tips.

I was terrified that as Giants fans, she and I were going to get booed out of Wrigley Field. Not only did we survive our first major-league baseball game (and the greasy pizza that accompanied), but we enjoyed it so much that we went again when I traveled to San Francisco for a journalism conference. I even subscribed to MLB.tv so I could tune into the games on my laptop and text my family about it while it was happening. It was a very unexpected, but very powerful way to feel close.

Passive engagement with a sport is one thing. But I’ve always joked that I throw like a girl. And ever since I was little, I’d duck whenever something came flying at me. Neither tendency lent itself to the pursuit of athletics. So a couple of days ago, when Mom suggested that I go out with Dad and Carson and hit the ball around, I stared at her. Was this the same woman who listened empathetically about my failed attempts to play volleyball?

Grumpily, I got up and shuffled outside, intending to watch for a few minutes before wandering off to play with my horse. Somehow, I found myself standing with an aluminum bat in my hands, swinging at a ball that hit me in the shin.

“Hold it with your knuckles lined up,” Carson told me.

“You’re swinging high,” observed Dad.

“This is why she was on the equestrian team,” said Mom.

I hit the next ball. And the next one. And the next. It was the first time I’ve hit a baseball in my life. I hit until my shoulder hurt. Then I played catcher while my brother hit, which mostly involved running after balls that the rosemary hedge caught and throwing them back to Dad. And by “throwing,” I mean, “launching them into the air only to fall several feet short of his glove and cause everyone in front of me to run in panic.”

Carson told me not to throw with my wrist so much.

I tried it. It worked. Really? All this time and that was the big trick?!

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about baseball is the dedication between teams and fans. SF’s slogan is, “Together, we’re Giant.”

My parents always told us they were our biggest fans. Getting older has taught me that I’m just as big a fan of theirs, and that makes us all a better team.

I'm pretty sure this time last year, I was wearing long underwear. Either I've toughened up or Chicago gave me a little bit of California today.

He twirled me in the frozen food section. A cart-pushing lady nearby laughed: “Dancing in Whole Foods?” He and I both cracked up, hugging each other.

Lunch at Whole Foods may not be anyone’s idea of the best date in the world, but when you’re overlooking the Chicago River in 70-degree weather in late October, and the goofy guy who stole your heart wants to dance with you regardless of who’s watching, it’s a pretty awesome date.