My friends and I really liked to spend time in the field and woods that were only about three blocks away from my childhood neighborhood. We were outside no matter the weather. There was an old oak tree that made it through every season, windblown and gnarled.

Do you know the story of the woman and the pot roast? Every time this woman would make a pot roast she would cut the end of it off before she put it in her pan. One day one of her kids asked her why she did this to the meat. “I really don’t know why,” she said, “That’s just how my mom did it.” That got her to thinking, so she called her mother to ask her.