It is the opposite.

It is a daily, astonishing catalog of what she can, each new thing arriving like a small sunrise.

The fifty states in three days.

The pages of a book.

The tower that does not fall.

She works for these victories, harder than most children have to, and she claims each one with a whole-bodied joy that has permanently recalibrated my sense of what is worth celebrating.

The sun was going down over the western hills, laying long bands of amber and rose and soft violet across the sky, and down the street I could hear children pedaling home for dinner and birds settling into the high branches of the oaks.