My mom was leaning down over my carriage. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear, and I noticed it. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. My mother couldn’t believe how curious I was. How alert at such a young age. How intent I was on figuring out what was different about the face I had become so used to. She took the pencil out from behind her ear and showed it to me and let me touch it. I marveled at it: This thing, this was what was different and unusual. And my mother marveled at her baby. She marveled in the moment and she marveled when she told me the story of the pencil, time and again.