It’s been a busy year for our This Ordinary Day writers. A marriage, a birth, a few trips around the globe and some major moves are just a few things our writers have been up to. Through it all, we’ve worked to see the wonder in the everyday. We hope you have as well.

This year we hope your holidays and your hearts are as full as ours.

Far and away the greatest classes I ever took were my Italian literature ones in college. I took four of them, all from the same professor, who had tiny classes (about eight students), and a terrifying strictness that was quite conducive to learning. She had two poetry classes and two short story ones, and they were required for the Italian major, which I got — mostly because I wanted to keep taking her classes.

For every poem or short story we studied, she’d ask, “What is the subject, and what is the theme?” The subject, she said, is what the poem is “about.” It’s a noun, probably one word. Don’t get all worked up, and don’t answer with the plot or anything complicated. “Love.” “Sex.” “Misery.” (You see, it was very Italian Italian literature.) The theme is what you learned about the subject. “Love overwhelms your senses.” “Sex makes life complicated.” “Misery follows love and sex.” (Very Italian.) We studied a poem by a morose man named Leopardi, the original emo kid, and I swear, in class, she said the theme was “Life sucks.” (When I put that in an essay, though, I got scolded.)

Subject and theme are a great thing to know, and like almost everything I learned in those classes, the lesson carried over into other parts of my life.

I have now been in California for just more than two years, and I have six weeks left. I’m simultaneously trying to wrap up the most powerful segment of my life so far and prepare for a thunderstorm, rock-star, whirlwind 2010. (If things go according to plan, by this time next year, I’ll be settling into New York City, having spent eight weeks reconnecting with my family, 2 1/2 months in Costa Rica learning Spanish and a ridiculously fun baseball season in Boston.) So — I’m getting contemplative.

Subject and theme are as good of frameworks as any for contemplation, and considering them has helped me stay calm in the pending shitshow of a transition. If my subject here is food, the theme is that spicy food is good. If it’s family, the theme is that mine is one of the best ever. Or that you can create one anywhere. If it’s faith, the theme is that you can always come back. And if it’s love — it’s that I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m good at it.

For that, I have to thank every inch of my experience. The sunshine and weather put me in a fine mood to love everybody. My girlfriends taught me that I deserve to love myself. My roommates taught me courtesy and generosity. Love is a choice, and traffic taught me that I have the ability to choose calm. More than anything, my students taught me how to love. That it requires superhuman patience and constant giving. That it’s sacrificial, and that it’s listening. And that it is borne of gratitude.

I thank every inch of my experience — that’s where my thunderstorm, rockstar, whirlwind 2010 begins.

I’ve never been super crafty. I can follow a paint-by-number, my mom taught me cross-stitching once, and I can even make something kind of cool out of Legos. But I’ve never had the patience to learn something worthwhile, like knitting or sewing or painting or pottery.

Every so often, however, I get the itch. This past weekend, a combination of the impending holidays and a charming craft show did me in.

Saturday afternoon, I stopped in at my in-laws’ church for a day-long craft show. I was planning on just dropping into my mother-in-law’s booth to sit for awhile and share some coffee. But as soon as I walked in the door I knew I was in trouble.

I saw hand-painted china, delicately and sweetly laid out with their matching sets. I saw (or smelled, rather) the best homemade candles. I marveled at some of the coolest woodcarving I had ever seen. I saw jars of homemade cake mixes, handmade fleece blankets, and knitted ski caps. There was an abundance of handmade jewelry, made with glass beads, clay, turquoise, stones and polished rocks of every color. There were innovative items too: tiny beads that, once placed in water, kept a live plant alive for a month before you had to water it again; two-sided quilts, so you can match both a fall-themed home decor and a Christmas one; even little bandanas that slip onto dog collars to match every season of the year.

While I don’t have much patience to learn a trade with my hands, I’ve always had the desire to learn. But I was overwhelmed, because I had no idea where to begin. There are so many options.

So I decided to start with the people in my life who have already made the leap.

Since Saturday, I have made arrangements with my mom to learn to make some jewelry, plans with my mother-in-law to learn how to sew blankets, and a phone call to my little brother to see if he might help me edit some photographs I’ve taken throughout the year to give as Christmas gifts. I have an offer from my friend Andrea, knitter-extraordinaire, to help me find some simple sewing patterns, and my friend Rachel has suggested a baking day.

As I look forward to these plans over the next few weeks, I am starting to notice gifts I have been given that took time and effort for the giver to make. I have a string of turquoise and red beads on a necklace from a college roommate. I have a set of picture frames filled with hilarious photos from a good friend. I have a fleece blanket, the pattern picked out and handmade by my mother. I have countless mix CD’s from my little brother. These gifts always remind me of the time and love they were made with.

But more than anything, I find myself getting more and more excited about these how-to sessions coming up for other reasons. Yes, I’ll learn how to do a couple things I didn’t know how to do before, which is useful. But I’ll be learning alongside people I love. We’ll make a pot of coffee, sit down over patterns and beads and pictures, and together we’ll figure out a way to make something beautiful from what’s in front of us. We’ll laugh and catch up and work together.

Whether I keep my creations or not doesn’t matter. And while they may have a little more value than a store-bought gift, they will have a long-lasting value for me. I will have the memories and enriched relationships with the people I love. And that’s what really matters.

Back in August, I started thinking about what it meant to hit bottom. I was walking into a Wendy’s just off of Highway 435 in Kansas City with an armful of my belongings, after watching my car be loaded onto a tow truck for the second time in less than two months. I was fresh off a temper tantrum that began with my car overheating, progressed to me punching the ground in frustration, and ended with my even-tempered girlfriend convincing me that things would be OK. I had hit an impressive string of unforeseen expenses and general misfortune. Walking into the restaurant with my ego shaken and my financial future seemingly in shambles, a question occurred to me:

“At what point does it stop being bad luck and start being something else?”

It’s not just now, months later having had the chance to reflect, that I realize how pathetic that sounds. As soon as the thought entered my mind, I tried to push it out. It was exactly the sort of sad negativity I don’t normally carry around. And yet…there it was.

I couldn’t let it all sink in yet, because I stopped to hold the door for an elderly couple on their way out of the restaurant. My mind was somewhere else, so I’m sure I looked distracted when the man asked me if I lived nearby.

“No, not really,” I told him, thinking he needed directions. “What are you looking for?”

“Well, we’d be happy to give you a ride if you needed one,” he said.

You know that part in movies where the bad guy suddenly realizes that he’s reached the end of the line and his misdeeds have finally caught up to him? That was me, as I was interrupted in the middle of my own little pity party. Here was this couple, owing me nothing, offering me a bit of help in a moment when I needed nothing more than some human compassion. And there it was.

A few weeks later, and in my car (which, as it turned out, only needed a new water pump) on my way to work, I realized I needed gas and soon. I felt for my wallet before I pulled into a station and realized I didn’t have it. It was exceptionally odd, because I’m a fairly systematic person. Each night, I put my bag, coat, wallet and keys in the exact same place so I won’t forget any of it as I rush out in the morning. Somehow, on this particular day, I’d left the wallet sitting in its spot while I hurried off to work.

This wasn’t a “kind of need gas, but I can wait until I get home” day. It was a “I need to put something in this car’s tank or I’m not making it home” day. So I dug through the coins I had and managed two full dollars worth of quarters. Fantastic. The only obstacle now was that I had to stop in one of Kansas City’s…uh…rougher neighborhoods. But I was desperate, so I turned down my internal voice of reason and ducked into the station to pre-pay my 200 cents.

I was standing in line, counting out the eight coins to be sure when I heard someone directly behind me ask, “Hey, what are you doing in my neighborhood?”

When I told this story to friends later, they all asked if I thought I was getting robbed. Honestly, I didn’t. There wasn’t enough time to compile the data (which, had there been, I would have come to the conclusion that I was being robbed). Instead, I looked up and saw the familiar face of my junior high friend and college roommate, Ryan.

“What the hell? What are you doing here?” I asked him, convinced I was in some kind of Twilight Zone moment. None of it made any sense: me being without my wallet, being in this neighborhood on this day and him being there, too.

“What the hell are YOU doing here?” he shot back.

I told him the story, declined his offer to buy me a tank of gas and told him I’d go straight home to get my wallet. He left and I got back in line. There was only one person in front of me and I readied my quarters. The customer in front of me finished and I stepped up, but he stopped me. He was holding two $1 bills.

“Here you go,” he said. “I hope this helps.”

A minute earlier, I would have pictured this man more likely to ask me for money than to give it to me. I tried to decline, but he insisted.

“I hope it helps,” he repeated, and walked out.

So much had to happen for the whole situation to happen the way it did. I needed to forget my wallet, I needed to miss a turn into the previous gas station I had meant to go to, I needed my friend to be in the parking lot at that exact moment, and I needed the generous man in front of me to hear the story. No matter how many times I run it through my head, I can’t force it to make sense. It’s just too many coincidences. I’m not saying it was any kind of supreme message or anything, but I’ll say this: when I’m the age of the couple who offered me a ride home, I likely won’t remember why I felt so desperate on a day of car trouble, but I’ll remember that their offer of a ride made me feel a lot better and changed my perspective, and there’s no way I’ll ever forget about the day I forgot my wallet.