Dear Scarlet

Dear Scarlet,
Today we made your thank you cards for your birthday things. We talked a lot about being grateful and what it means to say thanks. Appropriately, we read Dallas Clayton’s An Awesome Book of Thanks before bed tonight. There’s a part at the beginning of the book that talks about how there didn’t use to be anything at all. Then the questions started coming. You certainly know that your father and I are not religious people. You know that there are other people in the world who are and that’s fine too, as long as we can all respect each other. But because we don’t believe the earth was created by a man in the sky in 7 days and 7 nights, this question is a little bit more tricky. After we got done reading the book, I pulled out my phone and we laid in bed together and watched this video. It’s Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about the universe. He talks about how stars exploded and we are made from those same atoms. I told you about how your middle name is Aurora after the aurora borealis. We talked about being made of star stuff and how that connects all of us and sort of puts us all on the same plain. You have this turtle who is cleverly named Turtley. We turn it on at night, it’s shell has a light in it that shines stars all over the ceiling in your treehouse bedroom. We always say that it protects you. You looked at me and said, “Is that why Turtley protects me? Because those stars are made out of the same stuff as me?” I said yes. I told you that we are all one, everything. And that’s why if we can’t get along or be nice to each other or to the environment things don’t work out for us. It’s like being at war with ourselves. I don’t know how much of it you can totally understand, but I feel like you get it. When I left your room and closed the door, I got halfway down the ladder to the loft and I heard you yell, “Goodnight, Star stuff!”  I yelled it back and kept going down. Night, Star stuff. I love every tiny atom in your tiny body. As long as we’re giving thanks, I’m so grateful that the stars decided to explode and create you.