I did a picture for the First Barbie doll box.

I have a St. Bernard named B.

I pretend something scary is in front of me.

I read mysteries like Nancy Drew and Alfred Hitchcock, and I swim and I ride my motorbike.

Math - it's not my best subject.

My Panasonic typewriter can make graphs. It types in four different colors.

My parents put everything in a trust fund for me. I won't get it until I'm 18, so I'll use it for college.

The beast is not dead.

They used a doll when I fall through the ceiling.

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out.

The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head.

There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.

But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.

It's all too easy when talking about female gymnasts to fall into the trap of infantilizing them, spending more time worrying more about female vulnerability than we do celebrating female strength.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.