Dear Ruby

Ruby, you went to bed so excite at the prospect of throwing the moon about in your hands, like a luminescent balloon. We were listening to Ronnie James Dio, and there you go, saying phooooo, phoooo repeatedly, and then pointing at the window, which is also the direction from which the music was coming. I finally realize that it is the moon you were talking about, and not the Black Sabbath song I sing to you as a lullaby, which is now playing. You had taught yourself how to say "moon" for the occasion of your first being able to glimpse it from the window of your home. How beautiful it is. I take you across the room for another decent look at it, and there you go, giving me the sign you invented for "give it to me".
So, I lamely explain to you, not quite two years old, that the moon is a place, an object so big that it will not fit in our apartment ore even in our city. I try to tell you that it is a hundred thousand times as far away as Earwax cafe. For the next half our, we gleefully search images of the surface of the moon, the earth and moon seen from space, Mars, Jupiter, Titan, even Io. You are thrilled, but go to bed not wanting to hear Dio or Blue Oyster Cult or any other lullaby, but instead to hear me talk about the moon, which you gesticulate about playing with in your hands like a balloon. Ruby, some day you will either go there or pilot a robot to there, or at least think about a place like Io and imagine the sky on a place like that. Soon, Ruby, I will teach you things.