The Turtle Who Remembered Everything

There is a turtle on my grandmother's beach who is one hundred and forty years old. I know this because my grandmother knew her as a child, and my great-grandmother knew her as a child before that. The turtle has witnessed two world wars, the independence of Indonesia, a hundred typhoons, and the birth of a thousand children on this very beach. I asked her once what was the most beautiful thing she had seen in all those years. She...