It’s Mother’s Day, and I know I’m supposed to be thinking about how grateful I am for my mother. I’m thinking about that, but also in a broader way. I’m thinking also about how grateful I am for all of the people who have helped shape who I am. I’m on the train to Amsterdam at the moment to meet up with my dad, and travel the last legs of my trip. I’m through the part where I visit my friends, and now it’s family time. What I’m struck by, though, is how incredibly generous and open my friends and those around them are. I hadn’t seen several of these friends in 4 years, and it was so good to see them, and amazing to realize how little things change. I am thoroughly convinced that there is something to traveling and staying with friends; and as I say, I’m really just blown away by the power of sharing, even just for a few days, the quotidian things–food, space, conversation. Being in a generation who’s become accustomed to technology, it’s refreshing to realize I can still do this in person thing. And that technology has even enhanced that interaction and those relationships, I think. I really do feel like I live in such an unbelievably interesting time, so full of challenges and possibilities. And for that, I am so grateful. To the people and things that have, over time, impacted me, and uncovered who I am. And for all those to come.