He had forgotten his sheet music for class and was heading back to the dorm to retrieve it. I had just pushed through the dorm’s double doors, looking straight ahead, my mind on the reading assignment I’d be discussing with my professor. “It’s hard to meet people at Evergreen.” I turned and looked into the eyes of the young, bearded man who had spoken. Though he was built like a football player, his guitar case and long hair gave him a bit of a hippie vibe. He didn’t linger long—just enough...

I was recently blessed to spend some time with my ninety-six-year-old mother-in-law. I’ve written about her before—her early days as a migrant farm worker and her years as an entrepreneur running a Bible bookstore. In this photo, she’s holding another photo and telling the story behind it. It’s humorous in the way an innocent prank often is. She was fourteen, and she and her cousin thought it would be funny to take the leftover beer from an adult’s can, smear it on their faces and necks, and...

Long ago, my mom designed a beautiful mosaic table. She then meticulously tiled it, piece by tiny piece. My grandfather, practical as ever, engineered it in two halves so it could be moved more easily. It took my mom a couple of summer vacations to place each tile just right. Then my grandfather, with help from my aunt, built the structure to hold it together, setting it on a sturdy spool base. I was too young to remember any of that work. What I do remember are the card games around it. The...