The tragedy of puppies, taken from their families, all of them, never to see each other again. This is the sadness we inflict on the beasts we love.

Imagine if our lives were treated as carefully as the rest of history. Imagine if we were documented as conscientiously, preserved as gently. Each birth at least as important as a naval victory. Each death a national tragedy. There are plenty of ways to remember someone: a park bench, a colossus, an epic poem. Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling.

Happiness, as it exists in the wild – as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it’s gathered into careful piles – is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism. To believe that people are more good than bad. To believe that the waves carrying you are neither friendly nor malicious, and to know that you’re less likely to drown if you stop struggling against them.

A crisis of faith doesn’t have to be about God. You can have a crisis of faith about dust mites and food additives that cause behavioral changes.

It may not be terribly fruitful to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t satisfying.

It occurs to me for the first time that Lorelei is getting older – she must be eight years old by now – and that I may not have unlimited time to conduct my research. Or to enjoy the quiet pleasure of her company. I will lose her someday, that much is certain, and it makes me ache to think of it. But, as all dog owners must, I put the thought quickly out of my mind.

The unexpected thing, the miraculous thing, is when a car that’s been shattered in a crash, that’s been left in the rain to rust for years at a time, can be coaxed to growl to a start and slowly begin rolling down the hill.

We never know, do we, what our neighbors might be doing behind their fences, what love affairs and bloody rituals might be taking place right next door? The world is a more interesting place that we ever think.

There’s no book that absolutely everyone loves.

All this to say: I am forty-three years old. I may yet live another forty. What do I do with those years? How do I fill them without Lexy? When I come to tell the story of my life, there will be a line, creased and blurred and soft with age, where she stops. If I win the lottery, if I father a child, if I lose the use of my legs, it will be after she has finished knowing me. “When I get to Heaven”, my grandmother used to say, widowed at thirty-nine, “your grandfather won’t even recognize me.