A is for apple. The one that doesn’t fall far from the tree. The one that hit Newton and helped him discover gravity. The apple of my eye for all of time. It’s the first word I learned and the first picture I drew. It’s the first food I picked, eating donuts and drinking cider in the fall, watching the leaves turn brown. A is for airplane. The first time I was too young to remember, the second I was on my own, watching skyscrapers become pinpricks and wishing I had never left. A is the first letter of the alphabet, the start of something new. It’s a way of thinking, a way of learning. It is just the beginning.