Introduction

One: Roots. For my first teacher, my mother ; Lessons from preschool ; All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten redux ; The elementary school art teacher who gave an assignments I hated ; Mr. Spangenberger and enduring rejection ; The principal who once seemed fearsome ; Sunday school teachers and bullies ; Sisterhood is powerful ; When middle C is not the middle ; The perfect bookstore ; Joyce Piven, and how to listen ; Rilke and the romance of solitude ; My father and words of nourishment ; Paula Vogel ; Ancient tragedy and its influence ; Big questions ; There has been a death in the family ; How to drop out of graduate school ; Tina Howe and the pink elephant ; See one, do one, teach one ; Gifts ; Maria Irene Fornés on pleasure and the moment

Two: Branches. Lessons from a marriage ; Beth Henley and luck ; Dr. Seuss and Virginia Woolf, or letter to my daughters ; A lesson from Hope ; Learning to swim ; Why aren't you cheering for my sister? Or: the headless gerbils ; How to leave a meeting with a monster ; Ezra the falafel maker ; Lessons from critics ; Gloria Steinem ; Stage fright and mothers and daughters ; My daughter on dramatic irony and death ; When your babysitter is also your dharma teacher ; Walking a dog, or a toddler ; Giving your kids your divided attention ; Lessons from bleeding

Three: Flowers. Anne and the natural world ; On Shabbat ; The gardener ; My dog knows everything ; Max, or learning from you student ; Lesson on an Amtrak train from a monk ; When your shrink is also your dharma teacher ; The healing power of literature ; The show must not go on ; Learning from Scheherazade while binge-watching Succession ; Penelope, weaving and revising ; Lesson from a cranky neighbor ; Arthur Miller and Tony Kushner are tall ; The sad neighbor ; Polly and the two-dollar-bill dream ; On writer's block ; A practical use of meditation ; Theater as a school of presence ; Can you be your own teacher? ; My mother and Peter Pan ; Becoming a teacher ; Epilogue, or how I wrote this book.