Dear Miles,

This entire month has seemed like a tween:  full of ups and downs, stresses, worries about things that may or may not be reasonable, and some good laughs along the way as well.  Our normal house is partially gutted, and we’ve moved into our temporary house, which brings its own challenges.  We’ve mostly worked out a new routine now.  We know what time we have to leave to get places (earlier than usual to get to school and the grocery store, but we’re closer to our favorite Mexican restaurant).

You’ve handled it all pretty normally, which is to say you’ve been your usual self.  Sometimes you’re funny and friendly and sweet.  Other times you’re surly and sigh with great irritation at being asked to do the slightest thing to help anyone in the family.  You often feel the need to push back on any request or instruction.  Yesterday I told you to wash your hands after getting home from somewhere, and you said in a very put-up voice, “But why?”  I said, probably in an equally exasperated tone, “Coronavirus.”  I could see your brain churning, trying to come up with a response that would get you out of the onerous task of basic personal hygiene, but you didn’t manage it.

For the sake of posterity, I will optimistically assume that the coronavirus scare of 2020 will have come and gone by the time I am reading this fondly in the future.  At the moment, though, we’re feeling all kinds of different things.  On one hand, our personal demographic doesn’t usually suffer too badly.  Unlike many viruses, this one doesn’t seem to hit kids too hard, which is a relief for our family.  It’s elderly folks and people with compromised immune systems who are most at risk for serious illness, so we’re doing our very best to not be carriers and infect more vulnerable people.  People are cancelling events and trips, and that’s a concern with our Florida Keys vacation coming up next week.  We decided our sleepy Keys beach town isn’t any riskier than where we are right now.  In fact, as of this writing, there have been three seven cases in our home county and none in our vacation county.  The major concern is air travel, but we’ll just do our best to wipe down surfaces and try to keep our hands frequently washed and off our faces.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You’ve continued your academic and artistic progress.  You recently had the opportunity to be part of KidSing, a special day-long series of workshops culminating in a vocal music concert.  Only a few kids from each school were chosen to attend, and even though none of your close friends went, you didn’t seem nervous at all.  I really admire that about you, Miles.  In your situation, I probably would have felt intimidated without a buddy, but you don’t let that stop you.  As it happened, there were several kids there you knew from Family Folk Machine, but I truly don’t know if that was important to you or not.  You just do your thing, bravely and self-sufficiently.  You’ve made a nice friend group, especially in the last couple of years of elementary school, but you’re confident with or without them.

Mubby and Skitter were visiting last week, and they came to school and had lunch with you one day.  They said you and your friends were hilarious, and they weren’t sure how you managed to eat anything with all the time you spent laughing.  They were a little hesitant as to whether they should come have lunch with you, because maybe a twelve-year-old would think it was uncool to have his grandparents at lunch.  You said it was fine, in your nonchalant way, so they went ahead and did it.  Later that night at bedtime, we were talking about the best parts of our day, and you said it was when Mubby and Skitter came to lunch.

You’ve also been working hard on your school science fair project:  an analysis of different paper airplane configurations.  You did most of the background work at school:  you learned about and made a display poster describing the physics of flight.  Then we made five different paper airplanes that had different nose shapes, wing widths, and lengths.  You threw them each five times and we measured the distances, which you averaged and put into a spreadsheet.  You also noted things like a tendency to veer, nosedive, or fly straight.  Your teacher sent a video of your class presentation, which was great.  You have a science fair open to the whole school and parents tomorrow, so I am definitely going to come see you do that.  You do a good job with public speaking, and I’m looking forward to watching you in that setting.

Your current favorites:  embodying your Mister Whacky persona, sleeping in, pasta, Honey Nut Cheerios (it seems like maybe, just maybe, you’re moving out of your years-long Goldfish stage), making computer games on Code.org, cracking jokes, and having quiet time.  We should get plenty of that on our trip, since we’re going to skip any tourist-heavy activities.  We’ll get some much-needed sunshine, time in the water, and relaxation.

I love those genuine smiles, Miles.  I don’t catch them very often, but they sure make me happy when I do.

Love,

Mom