I thought I understood life in a wheelchair. Over a decade ago, my mother had been in a terrible accident that had left her wheelchair bound for nearly a year. Getting her around, without an ambulette, was extremely difficult and seldom done. So I thought I had some insight into the difficulties of the handicapped. Then I met Jason.

Sometimes I think I've been endowed with an overabundance of feelings. Things often seem to affect me more deeply than they do other people. I used to think this heightened sensitivity was a blessing, a gift to be treasured, but lately I'm beginning to have my doubts. It often seems to bring more suffering than satisfaction.

I never actually broke a window when playing catch against the side of the house, but I suspect I came fairly close many times. My family good-naturedly tolerated my enthusiasm, but it was really my grandparents who were my biggest fans.

It happened in Poland on a Friday night back in 1929, when Imma was six years old. The adored youngest of ten children, she sat at the dinner table, probably singing the wonderful Sabbath songs that fill her children's homes today. Everything was fine until her mother brought in the chicken soup. Somehow, by accident, Imma didn't get her portion.

Sometimes I find myself choking on silence, and I fear all my thoughts must come out or I'll simply burst, the unsaid gushing out and drowning us all. I sit quietly while they tell me how to live, but I have a million reasons why what they're saying simply won't work for me. I'm different. It's too late for me to be saved.

Hope. With little else to hold on to, Marion and Daniel Nachshon rebuilt their shattered lives in Palestine. Both escaped Hitler's hell in 1939.

As an Orthodox Jew and a science writer, I have the unhappy task of breaking some bad news to my fellow-believers of all religions. If you thought evolution was a threat to God, wait until you hear the latest. Brain scientists are getting close to being able to explain our moral choices by charting chemicals in our heads.

The silver spice box stood at the back of our mahagony sideboard.  The box was tarnished, and the flag up top was bent over.  As a child of six or seven, I would sit at the dining room table and spin the flag as I pictured the tiny princess who lived behind those silver filigree walls.