Pink of Perfection

This post was contributed by Katy McColl.
I stole that title from an MFK Fisher memoir, in which nearly every chapter is titled, The Measure of My Powers. The best thing about the book, in my opinion, is the epigraph:
“To be happy, you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.”...

I have been out in an old country house much of the summer, falling asleep to crickets. There, in my childhood bedroom, on the bottom of a rattan bookshelf, were nineteen years of journals lined up like little time bombs. I thought it would be fun––funny...

The cure for anything is salt water––tears, sweat, or the sea. –Isak Dineson
Chlorine will do, too, though lake-swimming is my favorite, especially when there’s a quarter-moon of sandy beach hugging the edge of the water. It started twenty-five years ago at Margaret Lindley with plastic buckets, shovels, tadpoles, and a sign...

In my high school sophomore English class, our desks were separated along the two long sides of the room facing each other, half of us with our backs to windows that looked out into a courtyard.  A walkway passed between the desks, and it was here one...