I went to the beach with my parents today. Always a delight to watch them together. After years of practice, they operate in perfect synchronization even when arguing. When I was young, I assumed I was the purpose of this two-part machine, but now that I’m grown up it’s clear that the machine exists for its own purposes. It’s not a gumball machine, you might say, but it happened to spit me, gumball, out into the world. How humbling to think I could have been some other flavor, or no gumball at all, based on the whim of these two other adults sitting on either side of me, arguing about whether that’s a yacht or a cigarette boat floating out on the horizon.
What really confuses me is where Molly fits into this well-oiled clockwork. She is like the little ball of sand in the gears, if the sand was curiously lovable and able to learn tricks.
