For the past 20 years, my resolutions have been mainly the same. Lose weight, get in better shape, travel more and spend more time with friends and family. This year, and I guess I actually started this a few years ago, I made this a way of life instead of a yearly goal.

Surveys show record numbers of Americans saying the country is off track, and the future feels bleak. And yet, beneath it, the impulse to kindness keeps flickering.

I could, I felt, either wallow in sadness at this state of affairs or, with my wife, chart our own course and go to places that we had never previously visited, using the strangeness of new locales to ask myself a series of questions on, broadly speaking, what it all meant.

We were driving through a small town in northern New Jersey one October when we saw a huge pile of leaves someone had raked into a mound. We looked at each other with big smiles, pulled over, ran with abandon and jumped into that leafy patch. No, we weren’t schoolgirls having fun, but three women in their 50s reliving their childhood.

Following an uncomfortable pause after the officiant asked if anyone knew a reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in matrimony, Monty, a comedian, stood up and loudly objected. Once the giggling started, the entire crowd realized we were in for another performance.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the “California sound” first entered my consciousness, inspiring a 700-plus song playlist that’s been carefully curated over decades.

Like my father before me, I taught my son to build a campfire the old-fashioned way: with balled-up paper under kindling, under twigs, under larger sticks, all fastidiously layered beneath three logs wigwammed in the center. It was a thing of beauty. We stood back in proud appreciation of our handiwork before striking a match in a solemn generational ceremony.

As a young girl, I thought my dad was the funniest, smartest, most handsome man in the world. He had many wonderful and endearing qualities, but he was a complicated man. He was an alcoholic and carried a depth of grief, shame and anger that often made him hide the best parts of himself.

Baseball had become part of my life — not like a boy growing up playing the game (because there were few female sports back then). But baseball became a constant thread for me in other ways.

There’s something special about female friendships. For me, my two friends are the sisters I never had. They knew me as a shy little girl, an awkward teenager, a young adult with career dreams, a new Mom and middle-aged woman. My parents and brother have passed, yet Brenda and Sue remain, sharing with each other all the details of our lives.