Dear Callum,

After lunch today, you went downstairs to play for a while before we started afternoon school work. A moment later, you dashed back up, a little distraught. You told us that you’d seen a spider. In an effort to keep tensions low, I mentioned that spiders are friends and eat a lot of bugs we don’t want to have in the house.

I should have known better.

Now, I’m not a particularly squeamish person. I don’t mind having a few spiders around. I even let a really leggy centipede live a while back because a little research told me it is much more predatory toward bugs than people, plus it was in the garage and not the sink. But the spider you found downstairs was a rather large one, black and sharp-looking. I never kill spiders on purpose, so I grabbed a cup and a piece of stiff paper in order to trap and release it outside. Of course, you made a rapid pivot. As soon as you got over being startled by it, you decided it was your new best friend, and it needed to live with us forever. I didn’t trap it in that moment, but I need to go get some laundry out of the dryer soon. If it’s still there, it’s getting evicted. I am never going to speak of it again and hope you don’t ask.

Your “save everything” nature has persisted in other areas, too. It’s a good thing digital artifacts are weightless, because you’ve asked me to take a picture of every slightly cute thing you see on your computer screen. You need to bookmark every video, save every picture you draw, and like every TikTok. You especially love a TikTok we’ve saved about a farm, particularly a Corgi named Boone. You even added a section to your goodnight ritual. Now, before we say, “It’s time to sleep, little deer, little deer. The very last kiss is almost here,” we say, “It’s time to sleep, little Boone, little Boone. The very last kiss is coming soon.” We have a lot of very-last kisses. Then, after all that, you ask for reassurance that it’s not the last kiss ever, just the last one of the day. Then you tell me it’s actually not, and you give me lots of kisses. Sometimes they’re on my cheek and sometimes they’re on my arm, depending on which skin treatments I’ve used. You do not like to get my hydrating squalane on your lips.

We’ve had some glorious spring days with lots of outdoor time, and along with that come your spring allergies. You haven’t woken up yet with the really pitiful swollen eyes that you get most often in late April and early May, but it’s probably coming. The good news is that, after much cajoling, you let me put allergy-relief eye drops near your eyes. It wasn’t a full-on application, but I convinced you to lie on your back and close your eyes, and I put a drop in the corner of each eye. Then I asked you to blink, and I think enough of the eye drops got into your eyes that you felt relief. You also agreed that it wasn’t a bad experience. That’s a lot further than we’ve gotten any other year, so I’m optimistic that we have a strategy for the upcoming weeks. Watch this space next month to see how that all turned out.

Another benefit of the warmer weather is more chances to see friends in the park. You were so excited to play with your friend Marian the other day. I’m glad about that, since you’ve been separated from your peers for so long now. Dealing with your brothers every day keeps you socialized to some extent, but it will still be a big transition when you move back to a classroom of your peers. At the park, you’re good about keeping a mask on, which makes me proud and hopeful that it will be reasonable to send you to school. I don’t know the exact timeline for pediatric vaccine, but it’s looking like the twelve-to-fifteen age bracket will be approved soon, and the five-to-eleven set should follow that. It’s unlikely that it will be before school starts, but we can hope. You’ve been feeling braver about participating in your online classes lately, and today you interrupted calendar time to show your teacher a reflection on the wall that looked like an infinity symbol. My first impulse was to tell you to not interrupt and to wait for a more appropriate time to share, but she was very gracious about it. I’m glad she sees that it’s a big deal that you want to participate. Of course, you asked me to take a picture of it.

You’re a good dancer, a sayer of funny things, a lover of interesting pajamas and soft pants, and a snuggler. You like waffles and Skitter Mix (a 2:1 blend of lemonade and orange juice), and every morning you tell me in exacting detail how you want your breakfast. Even if you’re half asleep and I ask you if you want your usual favorite, the answer is never just “yes.” The answer is “Waffles how I always like them, two, extra butter, extra syrup, cut up, and Skitter Mix, extra lemonade, extra orange juice, no ice.” The only slightly uncertain factor is the beverage, because sometimes you choose plain lemonade, but you go through the whole spiel every morning. Every morning, I wait for the last bit to get the one piece of information I actually need.

Ritual is clearly important to you, and even through this strange year, we’ve kept up with many of them and invented some new ones. I imagine some of them will stick and some of them will fade. We’ll watch and wait.

Your current favorites: hats, stuffed animals, Pop Tarts, barbecued pork, PBS Kids games on the iPad, protecting every living creature, and doing projects. We had fun planting lettuce seeds over the weekend, and I’m hoping you’ll expand your palate to include some nice salads. Maybe it will work if I ask you to imitate the lettuce-loving tortoises from a TikTok you asked me to save.

Love,

Mommy