There are few spectacles more inspiring than a child possessed by a purpose she cannot explain. Our youngest sister, Marcy, was six years old when she undertook one of the grandest public works projects ever attempted in our backyard.

One morning, she armed herself with a little shovel, marched to the future site of nothing in particular, and commenced excavating the earth as though she had received confidential instructions from the Department of Moles. Nobody questioned her enterprise, as that would have spoiled the mystery.

In our family, peculiar behavior was not only tolerated but expected. We merely accepted that Marcy had entered into a private contract with the soil, and the soil appeared to be losing.

Every day, she dug with the determination of a gold miner who had already spent the gold. Rain or shine, she shoveled away while Adam and I rode our bicycles, chased frogs, and pursued the important business of wasting childhood.

The hole grew deeper, wider, and more respectable until it was less a hole than a geological event. Had someone filled it with water, the neighborhood children might have charged admission to swim in it.

The remarkable part was that Marcy never announced her intentions. She never claimed to be searching for pirate treasure, dinosaur bones, or China.

She just dug. Adults spend years inventing committees before accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Marcy skipped the committees and went straight to accomplishing something nobody had requested. Then, after nearly two months of relentless labor, she quit.

There was no ceremony, declaration of victory, or farewell address to the shovel. She just abandoned the enterprise as completely as politicians abandon campaign promises after Election Day.

The excavation stood there in silent testimony to ambition interrupted, while its creator wandered off to discover some newer fascination, leaving the rest of civilization to deal with the consequences. That, naturally, meant Adam and me.

Nothing teaches a boy about injustice quite like being appointed custodian of somebody else’s ambition. We were handed shovels and instructed to refill every ounce of dirt that Marcy had so diligently removed.

It was an educational experience. We learned that the universe possesses a curious accounting system: the fellow who digs the hole earns the glory, while the fellow who fills it in earns character.

We grumbled through every shovelful, convinced that history would one day recognize us as victims of organized sibling labor. Marcy, meanwhile, watched with the peaceful expression of a retired contractor who had successfully outsourced the unpleasant phase of the project.

Then our father returned home from Vietnam.

His arrival was the happiest event our family could have imagined, and before long, he announced he was going to build the girls a sandbox. Adam and I exchanged the sort of look usually reserved for witnesses to bank robberies and lightning strikes.

A sandbox! It was the very treasure we had begged for ever since we moved into that house in 1967.

Our petitions had vanished into the same invisible filing cabinet where childhood requests generally go. Yet there it stood at last, fresh lumber, clean sand, and all the glory of a proper sandbox.

For the girls.

Adam and I admired it with the cheerful expressions of two taxpayers watching somebody else receive the government subsidy. We congratulated our sisters with every ounce of brotherly grace we could manufacture, though I suspect our smiles looked suspiciously like stomach cramps.

Looking back, I cannot honestly say the affair was unfair. Life has always possessed a wicked sense of humor.