"God, just let him get back to me in one piece, please!" I would never ask for anything else. It was the plea, the bargain, the mantra I kept repeating in my head during the nine months my husband, Liam had been deployed in Iraq. He did come back in one piece – the wound in his left leg would take months to recover from and bound him to a wheelchair and therapy, but he was back. In a way, I knew something was off the mome...

Sophia Lyceum, Switzerland Christmas Eve Collin I was mentally prepared that I was going to spend the holidays at school. I was here on a scholarship and my parents just couldn’t afford to fly me back to our small Russian village, especially with the prices of the tickets at this time of the year. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find out that Collin, one of the boys in our extended group of friends, was also stayi...

“This is the last time I let you drag me hiking with you!” I declared to my brother while struggling to assemble the last few parts of the tent I was going to sleep in tonight. “Was this thing designed by IKEA? There are too many extra parts, for God’s sake!” “Andrew will help you with it; we have to go so that we can go back before dark.” My brother and the rest of his college friends were going to attack the mountain pe...

“Where do you want this box? It’s the last one,” my colleague Anton asked, waiting for me to appear; the rest of my stuff scattered all over the small one-room apartment floor. “Just leave it somewhere. I don’t have the energy to deal with any more boxes today.” It was move-into-the-new-place day and we all had had more than enough of our fair share. “Come, get a beer. The takeout is on the table. Where’s everyone else?”...