Every day, when he walked in, my mood lifted.

Remember: this won’t last forever. And it doesn’t. Just four years.

A struggling actress in between auditions, I was grabbing a hotdog at Gray’s Papaya on West Seventy-second in Manhattan when David Gilbert recognized me.

The dining room disappeared. That’s what happens when your brain doesn’t want to acknowledge the world anymore, when something is presented to you that you just can’t look at yet, let alone name.

I struggle to swallow as I read cancer articles, the tenderness in my throat increasing with each one.

I say yes without thinking about the words.

Strictly speaking, I’d seen a girl with chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail exit the bus. Yet she looked, from behind at least, so strikingly similar to my big sister Joan, that it didn’t occur to me that it might not be her.

This is a story of my son’s conception. I hope he likes it.

I wasn’t always a bad kid. Sure, I was a little anti-social and my penchant for wild bursts of Disco dancing made me a very lonely 3rd grader.

"Oh, please. You're Andy Warhol. Let's have dinner, okay?"