Dear Scarlett,
I found my first gray hair this week. It seems you're not the only one growing older. Although I'm happy to report that you are the only one with a basketball sized stomach.
Sometimes I have these flashes of nostalgia, bits of my former life coming back to me in the same kind of detail as a movie I once saw, and I wonder if I'm supposed to feel this separated from my past. It's just hard to believe I'm even close to the same person I was when I was a kid. I wonder how much you'll change over the course of your life and what events will contribute to the adult you become. I hope our dance parties in the kitchen will shape you. I hope my announcing on the Internet that you have a basketball sized stomach will not.
There are people who look back on their younger years as the best times of their lives, people who can never escape high school, for example, because they'll never feel as important as they did then. I don't have that issue--for me, life just keeps getting better, and that's because of you. Because of Dad. Because of our whole family and our wonderful friends. Because of your Aunt Lizzie, who walked right up to me and plucked out my first gray hair.
I hear your little feet running down the hall towards me right now. You've just returned from the zoo and you show up in my office doorway with your snack container, demanding that I open it. We share some graham crackers and I hear about all the animals you saw, though it's Aunt Lizzie who tells me because you are too busy stuffing crackers into your mouth. You take a break to agree with her that you saw an otter. "Ow-wa."
You say new words every day. Rob (for Uncle Rob, not for Dad), eggs, work, doll (I didn't know you knew this word until I put two of your dolls in the washing machine to be cleaned and you screamed for them), shout, Scout. It's hard to believe soon you'll be stringing these words together to make sentences, to explain yourself and to tell us how you're feeling.
So we're both getting older, along with everyone else around us, and life continues to change. Though it is sometimes bittersweet to think about the things and the people I miss, I can say with certainty that I like the direction we're heading.
Love,
Mom
