“Happy New Year Bethie! It’s 2010 now,” I tell her, when she comes in to wake me up.
“It’s a new year?”
“Yup! It was 2009 yesterday, and now it’s 2010.”
“And then summer will come and it will be a new year?”
“Nope, it won’t be a new year again until Winter comes again. It will go Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and then when the next Winter comes, it will be time for 2011. The earth needs to make one full turn around the sun.”
“Oh yeah! And we’re spinning too, really fast, right? But we can’t feel it.”
“Right! The earth is always spinning but we can’t feel it.”
She stands there, looking out the window, up at the sky for a moment. Then she says soberly, “I can feel it.”