I was thinking about my first kiss in the middle of a root canal. The dentist and his colleague stood over me, overhead light beaming in my face, tubes and tools cluttering my mouth. It was their conversation that brought me back to the fateful day. “Who sings this song?” my dentist asked his colleague. “It’s really good.” Michelle Branch’s ‘All You Wanted’ played faintly over the room’s sound system. “Uh, I think it’s Christina Aguilera,” the other man replied. I wanted to chime in and correct them but wasn’t in the proper physical state. Instead I relived that evening a few days after my 14th birthday when I saw…

Our stories start long before we do. We ourselves are just one small fragment in a gargantuan mosaic, a mere paint speck in an epic mural. Although we can only see from our particular place in the picture, sometimes we catch a glimpse of the entire masterpiece. Had the wind shifted just slightly in Pompeii on the day Mount Vesuvius’ erupted in 79 AD, my ancestors wouldn’t have survived. Instead, they managed to escape the smoldering city that had been their home, continuing our lineage for countless generations, eventually leading to my great grandmother’s family departing Italy for America and ultimately, my own existence. When my family arrived on Ellis…