Talking Big Ideas.
Our daughter is here!
Maryrose and I are unplugged and enjoying these first days together. The Ewing School team is running at full speed while we’re away.
Below is a letter to Annabelle.
Cheers,
Bob
“If you do not see miracles happening all around you, look again.”
~ Oliver Redding, from American Jesus by Mike Callahan
Annabelle!
Your mom and I are thrilled to have you officially join our family.
We live along a river in the mountains, tucked into the Laniakea Supercluster on a planet called Earth. It’s the most lively place in the entire known universe. Your big brother, Pearson, has already become something of a local. He’s been crushing it here. He’ll help you navigate things as you get up to speed.
We decided to name you Annabelle Wilder Ewing.
Your first name honors your Nana (Anne Zulick), your Grandma Fran (Frances Ann), and your Aunt Isabel.
Your mom and I hope you draw inspiration from all three: Nana’s drive to follow her inner calling and achieve personal excellence; Grandma Fran’s voice of reason and loving devotion to family and friends; and Aunt Isabel’s infectious whimsy and commitment to pursuing her dreams.
We can’t wait for you to get to know each of them.
Your middle name comes from Rose Wilder Lane, a writer and philosopher who believed that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. We hope you learn from her that you can see the unique potential in other people and help them realize it. That you can live your life on your own terms without waiting for permission. And that you can trust the creative energy of free people working together to build a better world.
Your last name comes from me. Our relatives traced our family line back twelve generations, forming an unbroken chain to the 1600s. I know some of your ancestors’ stories. Most are still waiting to be discovered. I’d love to search for more of them with you.
We hope your last name instills in you a feeling of home and a connection to family that stretches across vast distances, generations, and cultures. And that, wherever you are, you always feel a sense of belonging.
Together, your three names form an acronym that we hope will shape how you see the world:
AWE
Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and wondrous.
Awe opens our hearts to beauty, music, nature, big ideas, and one another. It reminds us that we are surrounded by transcendence. Awe is a superpower – a vaccine against the modern plagues of anxiety, cynicism, self-righteousness, and doom.
I can’t wait to experience awe with you: hiking to an alpine lake and gazing at the stars on a clear mountain night, listening to Bach performed in a candlelit cathedral, traveling to a distant land to stand beneath a total solar eclipse. Let’s do all three together.
Importantly, awe is everywhere. We don’t have to travel to find it. We just have to pay attention.
Awe is in the leaves scattered across our backyard. They look so ordinary. Yet each is a tiny solar-powered factory, quietly performing one of the greatest miracles in the universe: capturing energy from our nearest star and turning it into life. Their story began billions of years ago and is still unfolding before us.
Awe is in the swaddle wrapped around you right now. It feels so simple. Yet its story is as grand as the leaves. No one alive understands every step required to make it. Millions of people – separated by oceans, languages, and centuries – unknowingly contributed their knowledge, labor, and energy to creating your swaddle: inventing tools and mining minerals; cultivating crops and caring for animals; harvesting and weaving fibers; building trucks and roads, ships and ports; writing software and coordinating cargo across oceans. Their efforts form an astonishing web of cooperation stretching across continents and millennia. Together, they made the swaddle keeping you warm tonight.
Awe is in your own small body, assembled from elements forged in the hearts of ancient stars.
You were born into a wondrous world. The medicine that helped bring you safely into it, the sunlight shining through the window as you took your first breath – everything surrounding you now and always, whether built by humanity or shaped by nature – is far more extraordinary than it first appears.
Perhaps most of all, awe is in the way you choose to see the world.
There is one more thread woven into your name.
Annabelle comes to us from Scotland, the home of my father’s fathers, and from an old Latin word: amabilis. It means worthy of love.
Remember this:
You are and always will be worthy of love.
You already sense it through your mom’s embrace. As you grow, love will take new forms. Some will comfort you. Some will challenge you. Some will open your heart, fill you with awe, and transform you.
Through it all, your mom and I will love you unconditionally. We will do everything in our power to help you move through this enchanted world knowing, deep in your soul, that you are loved.
You are enough. Just as you are.
You have already made our world more magical.
Always Yours,
Dad
P.S. This music video came out the week you were born. It captures the spirit of the times on this lively little planet – and the joy of your arrival in our small corner of it:
