A small, blond girl of 4 and three quarters (she would tell you) drove with her parents down highway 101, away from Bay City. Rockaway Beach was full of history, her mother asserted from the passenger seat, but the young girl was not listening. Instead she peered out of the window to her right and blurred her vision as the trees went by. The blurred flurry of pine specks and long, wood-colored streaks seemed to her like beach sand the way it fell sideways across the window as if from some large hand farther ahead. God, maybe. She turned her head sideways, admiring her private hourglass from the back seat, now right-side-up. “We’ll get there before you know it. Trust me, you’ll be sad when the whole thing is over,” the mother called back to the small, blond girl who cupped her head sideways in her hands. Watching the sand float by, the girl thought, ‘I’m growing up, but some day I won’t be anymore.’