A simple walk is exponentially more interesting with a puppy. They are incessantly curious about the world, about every crack and crevice in the cement that we mindlessly walk over as we stare at our phones. They allow random strangers to touch them and coo and love on them. And they openly receive it, without being pretentious or feeling underserving. They abandon themselves in curiosity and sensation.

They are what we wish we were, without the burdens of responsibility and reason.

Molly is teaching me how to see the world again for the first time. How to attune my senses to the different smells- the maple syrupy waffle cones wafting out of the ice cream parlor on Main Street, the stuffy old used bookstore with dusty shelves of coffee-stained pages and underlines sentences, the refreshing salty ocean breeze.

She is teaching me to find wonder again in the mundane. This is what we strive for, not only as writers, but as human beings.