A bio is usually about what you've done. For me, I think it's more about what I was given.
Two women. Two lessons. Maybe two ways of moving through the world.
The first came from my grandmother — my Bubbie. She didn't speak English, and when I was very young I didn't quite understand that English and Yiddish were different languages. When she spoke, it wasn't only words anyway. Her eyes spoke. Her hands spoke. Her whole body seemed to enter the conversation.
There was one word she used that stayed with me: b'shert.
People translate it as meant to be, but that has always seemed too simple. It loses something — the feeling, the trust, the way Bubbie said it.
I don't depend on b'shert. I don't walk through life assuming everything that happens was destined to happen. But when I recognize it, I trust it.
Something arrives. Someone appears. One thing bumps unexpectedly into another. And sometimes there is that feeling: don't question this too much. Pay attention.
My mother gave me something different.
I grew up in New York City public schools. Report cards came home on heavy stock with the academic subjects in one section — math, English, science, history — and another group of qualities somewhere in the middle.
Those were graded:
O. S. N. U.
Outstanding. Satisfactory. Needs Improvement. Unsatisfactory.
I wasn't a great student. I remember bringing a report card home, frightened by the academic grades, and giving it to my mother.
“Mommy, don't be mad. My report card isn't so good.”
She looked at it. “Your report card is excellent. I'm so proud of you.”
I couldn't understand what she was looking at. She wasn't looking at math. She was looking at the middle. Citizenship. Cooperation. Behavior. The things that had O's beside them.
She told me the subjects I wasn't doing well in could be learned. But these? These were the things that mattered in life.
I never forgot that.
Years later, on my first day at The Washington Post, I walked into the building and saw Eugene Meyer's principles displayed there — principles about integrity, truth, responsibility and service to the public.
I spent nearly three decades at the Post. Toward the end of those years, I received the Eugene Meyer Award, given for exemplifying those principles.
There was something almost circular about that moment. The kid staring nervously at his report card had carried those O's with him. Not consciously. Not as a plan. They were simply there. And they still are.
I think they explain why I am drawn to creating places where people can talk to one another. Why I like handing someone a microphone. Putting a writing prompt on a table. Asking a question. Bringing people together around a difficult book. Making room for the person standing at the edge.
I want to create opportunities. Opportunities for someone to speak. To write. To listen. To discover another person. Sometimes to discover something in themselves.
And every now and then, one of those opportunities turns into something I never could have planned. That's when I hear Bubbie. b'shert. Trust it.
So maybe this is my bio. A grandmother who taught me something without ever really defining it. A mother who taught me what part of the report card mattered. And a life spent discovering that the lessons we carry longest are not always the ones we knew we were learning.
Somehow, it all goes together.
Everything else is dates and titles.