Last June, I received a family heirloom. Thanks to ubiquitous smartphones, we were able to watch its three-week journey, starting with the day when it was loaded onto a truck in front of my parents’ apartment in Lima, Perú. A couple of days later, a customs agent sent us photos of it, parked ami ...

There was the time my Mother, tired of our fighting, left us in the back seat of her wood-paneled Toyota Corona station wagon while she did the grocery shopping. "You two go ahead and kill eachother; I am going to do my shopping in peace," she said. (Ah, the things you could do in 1979 without being ...

I learned to drive on a 1985, 5-speed Honda Civic CRX Si. There was nothing luxurious about my first car, which was already 7 years old when my Mom helped me buy it before I left for college. A high school friend, who had received a brand-new white convertible BMW as her graduation present, laughed ...