Six years ago, during a time when my life had completely lost its luster, I met a clerk at a Wawa convenience store who understood the healing power of happiness. Actually, I suppose I never really “met” him.  I simply had the good fortune to go through his checkout line.

I have a friend who’s in trouble. Let’s say her name is Vicki. Let’s say she’s in California. The details don’t matter. Hers is an all-too-common story. A mutual friend, Lucy, has kept me up to date on Vicki’s situation with her husband, who abuses her.

Lucy is Vicki’s confidante, the person who’s heard the most about the psychological intimidation Vicki suffers. Recently Vicki has started saying she’s going to leave him. But they have two children, and she doesn’t want them to grow up without a dad. Also, she feels bad for her husband. He had a rough childhood, with a rich father who didn’t love him.

One beautiful spring day several years ago, I traveled deep into the mountains of Chiapas with a group of conservationists to talk with local ranchers about cows—specifically, what they ate, and how. Around us the steep hillsides were nearly denuded. What grass remained was gray-brown. So many cattle trails crisscrossed the area that the hills looked as if they had been terraced by an ancient culture. It was among the most abused land Jeff and I had ever seen.

And yet in a small valley just below, some of the biggest cows we’d ever seen grazed on long, lush grasses. Suisse was the local term the ranchers used to describe them: well fed and healthy in all respects.

The ripening Winesap had a beautiful pinkish cast to its skin, a shine that promised good eating—and a long-legged, fierce-looking insect clinging to it. An assassin bug that could inflict a nasty, painful bite.

We were absolutely thrilled.

This year Jeff and I have sworn off using chemical sprays at our five-acre orchard in the Virginia mountains. We’ve been moving in this direction for several years but until now hadn’t gotten up the nerve to go completely chemical free.

Finding assassin bugs all over our apples made us whoop with joy—literally. These lanky, scary-looking creatures eat Japanese beetles, which last year caused serious damage to our trees.

I am teaching a little boy to read.

That is, I am hoping to teach a little boy to read.

The first sentence expresses what I envisioned when I signed up last spring to work as a volunteer tutor with young Latino students.

The second reflects reality.