Dear Artemis,

I have to say, you have been a very agreeable person lately. You still choose to spend most of your time at home ensconced in your room, but when you do join us, you’re funny and friendly. You and Callum have been playing together a lot, making weapons out of cardboard and balloons and other household items. You then battle one another, and I remain in favor of the activity because no one has gotten hurt yet. You even made a video of your matches, complete with edits for time (which I as a viewer appreciated) and sound effects. You and Tobin still get into it a fair amount, which seems to bother your dad and me more than it bothers either of you. Tobin has stayed home from school the last couple of days due to a cold, so he’s been sleeping in. I’ve enjoyed chatting with you at the breakfast bar, just the two of us, before school.

The biggest every-other-Spring-Break event for our family is coming up in just a few days: our Florida Keys trip. We’ve all managed to stay Covid-free, though I had about 36 hours of terror before we got Tobin’s test results back. I did buy trip insurance so we could reschedule if someone got Covid, but I was really, really hoping not to have to use it. We’re doing our best not to let the cold work its way through the whole family, though that may be a futile effort. Callum started complaining of a sore throat today, and your dad and I are both on a constant paranoid search for symptoms in ourselves. So far you seem not to have gotten it, probably due to your preference for staying in your room all the time. I hope it’s not too bad for anyone and we can all have some fun and relaxation. Last time, we could barely drag you out of the pool, which was good because it was at the very beginning of the pandemic, and we hardly left the condo at all. This time, armed with masks and vaccines and very low Covid rates at both our home and our destination, we hope to do a few more cultural and nature-related adventures in the area. I’m sure my next monthly letter will be mostly pictures from that trip.

After Spring Break, you’ll only have a couple of months left as a junior high student. Your seventh-grade year was so weird it hardly counts, and this year seems to have gone even faster. It’s hard to fathom that you’ll be a high school student soon, but you signed up for classes, so I guess that’s good evidence. Your eighth grade year has gone very well, as far as I can tell. You finished your second trimester with straight-As, continued to develop good friendships and went to some birthday parties, and seem to be generally enjoying your life. Even though our school district ended its mask mandate, you tell me that most people still choose to wear masks in school. You know how important it is to me that you continue to wear yours, and I am glad that you haven’t made a stink about it. I wish you didn’t sit next to a non-masker in band, but we can’t control what others do.

We’ve started thinking about what the summer will look like. Technically you’ve aged out of your favorite animation camp. At the showcase after last summer’s camp, I was thanking your teacher for all the good times and expressing that it was a bummer that you’d completed your last year. The teacher insisted that you were welcome as long as you wanted to come, and that the age limit shouldn’t stop you. For that reason, you decided to sign up again this summer. It might start getting awkward if you’re a lot older than the other students, but maybe you could be an assistant teacher down the road. One conflict that emerged is band camp, but as a freshman, you only have to attend the last two days. I figure you’ve learned enough animation by now that it won’t be a huge problem to miss a small chunk of the camp. Mostly what I care about is that you’re doing something fun and interesting, and both animation camp and band camp fit that description.

You needed some new shirts, so I bought you some, and I fear my days of shopping for you in the children’s section are over. All your shirts look too short in the arms. Your brace exacerbates this effect, and you only wear that during your at-home hours, so hopefully during the school day you don’t suffer too badly from cold wrists. It took me a while to come to terms with the idea of buying shoes for you from the adult section, and I’m not too crazy about the clothing side of the equation either. It will be tricky to find pants that are both long enough and skinny enough for you. I bought you a few new pairs of shorts for our trip, and it’s a very good thing they had real drawstrings. It is very frustrating how many shorts and swim trunks have purely decorative drawstrings at the waist, and since I do most of my shopping online, it can be hard to know before the package arrives. What kind of nonsense is that?

This will be our first flight involving your back brace, and it will be interesting to see how that works. I know we’re allowed to carry it on with us without it counting against our carry-on allotment, so we’ll probably do that. It seems safer than checking it, considering the way checked baggage gets tossed around. I don’t think you’d want to wear it during the flight, since you find it uncomfortable to be seated for very long while wearing it. There’s also the question of physical therapy, which involves a few accessories of different sizes. I asked your therapist about it at our last appointment, and she said it was fine to just do a modified version of PT during our vacation. I think we’ll bring the exercise band and skip the inflatable ball and tension straps. I don’t think it’s smart to skip PT entirely, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate having a week-long reduction in intensity. Swimming is great exercise for scoliosis patients too, so if you spend as much time in the pool as you have on previous trips, I think we can consider it an overall spinal success.

Your current favorites: watching Psych with your dad and Tobin, pasta, chatting online with your friends, Mario Maker, changing your clothes, making weird expressions when I try to take your picture, walking to and from school with your friends, and everything in the Pixar universe. There’s a new Pixar movie coming out soon, and I hope it’s available immediately on Disney+. It would be fun to watch it together during our vacation. The pandemic has been mostly awful, of course, but one positive outcome has been the wider availability of movies on streaming services. It’s fun to go to the movies, sure, but it’s quite expensive if we’re taking the whole family, and it’s not as much fun if you (I) don’t feel comfortable taking of your (my) mask to eat popcorn. The TV room works well for me.

My dear child, thank you for being such a cool person. Even if not all your choices are exactly the same ones I would make, I know and trust that you are a smart, good-hearted, creative human being. I am grateful for your resilience and dependability. I’m so glad you’re in our family.

Love,

Mom