Facebook status post, 4/22/11

When I was living on the Lower East Side, someone posted a fruit-bearing fig tree in a container on the free section of Craigslist. I emailed the poster, but I was too late by, like, a million emailers. I was sad; a container fig tree seemed like the best thing ever. Eight or so years later and a whole continent away, a giant 90-year-old fig tree fruits riotously in my backyard.

How does this happen, this wanting something so much and then being gifted its exaggeratedly superlative version? It is a metaphor for my whole life. I don't walk in gratitude, I swim in it, daily. Hourly.