…I’m doing okay in the world as “Zac.” I like to write about the people and places that have stayed with me, and the things I understand about them only after the years have passed. Normantique connects me to the people whose lives run through these pages and speaks to my affection for things that have carried a little of the past into the present.

I’ve always been drawn to the way an ordinary day can become a story someone carries for a lifetime. Maybe what seemed like the background of your life starts to reveal how much love and effort were holding it together.

I’ve also been fortunate to know and love people who have achieved remarkable things. Their creativity, skill, and determination have shaped my sense of what a person can do with a life. They inspire me to make things of my own, and to tell the stories behind what they accomplished: the work, the risks, the people who helped, and the years when the outcome was still uncertain.

Many of the stories here begin with my family: my grandparents, parents, great-grandparents, and the people whose lives crossed theirs. Others begin with a place, a work of art, or a question I haven’t managed to leave alone. I’m interested in memory, identity, grief, wonder, and the unexpected ways a life can change direction.

We give stories different names depending on where we find them. Gather the surviving pieces of yesterday, and we call it history. Give an idea a color, a shape, a sound, and we call it art. Spend seventy years discovering what happens when you love people and make decisions without reading the instructions, and we call it a life. A footprint tells of someone passing. An empty chair tells of someone gone. Even a stone has arrived at this particular moment by a long and improbable route, though getting the details out of it may require considerable patience. Everything that exists has something to tell. We spend our lives adding to the telling, sometimes deliberately, sometimes beautifully, and sometimes simply by opening a door and changing what happens next.

I want the people in these pages to have room to be themselves. To be funny, stubborn, inventive, uncertain. To make mistakes and have adventures without knowing which parts someone will remember.

Since losing people I love, I’ve come to cherish the ordinary time we had together. Being close enough to drop in. Listening to a story I thought I would hear again. Going somewhere for no particular reason and coming home with something worth keeping.

Writing gives me a way to spend more time with those moments—and to introduce their people to someone new. Sometimes that means following a great achievement back through the life that made it possible. Sometimes it means pulling up a chair while someone puts down the groceries and tells me about Tuesday.

I’m glad you’re here. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.