Across the deck, Maya fitted the wooden cutout of Texas into its place in her new puzzle map and held it up over her head in triumph.

“Texas!” she shouted, beaming.

“That’s right, baby,” I called back, laughing.

“That’s Texas!” She has, in the months since she mastered the fifty states, developed a fierce and specific love for the shapes of things, for maps and puzzles and the satisfaction of a piece finding its place, and I have learned to sit with her for as long as she wants, naming the shapes, because there is nothing in my day more worth doing than watching my daughter learn.

People sometimes assume, when they hear her story, that raising her must be a story of limitation, of managing what she cannot do.