She doesn’t have a car, and she doesn’t really have any friends, so she rarely travels outside of the two-mile radius between her home and her work, but every Wednesday morning, like clockwork, she takes her little kid to the park on the edge of town. It’s not kept up well by the state—no surprise there—the colored metal of the monkey bars chipped and faded, and the swings squeaking with rust, but that boy’s face lights up when they go. Like it’s the best thing in the world. A simple type of joy that somewhere along the way we lose. Either because we become conditioned to view the world
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