She sat down and listened to me very carefully. About how there was an enormous explosion and all of matter splattered in all directions, until planets and stars formed. And on our planet, there was some great soup with bacteria, all cooking in the ocean like boiled tamales, till they became fish to snakes to elephants to apes to us. And when I was finished, she looked out the window at all the Joshua trees in her yard. “So that’s what they’re reaching for,” she said. “I always wondered.”
