Dear Miles,

It’s been close to a month now that you’ve been out of school.  Right before spring break, you had your school science fair, which may have been the last normal activity anybody in your school community did this season.  You worked hard on your project, which was learning and displaying information about the physics of flight.  You (with some help from me) made five different designs of paper airplanes, which you flew and then measured their flight distance.  The whole school came to the science fair—things weren’t quite as grim then regarding COVID-19—and you were proud to show off your project.  Callum especially thought it was cool to visit your booth with his preschool classmates.

Shortly after that event, we went to the Florida Keys.  We hemmed and hawed about that decision a lot.  In the end (and I reiterate, the situation was not as dire then as it is now), we decided to arm ourselves with cleaning products, strict instructions to touch nothing and keep distance from non-housemates, and fly down.  Once we were there, we barely left the condo.  I know Tobin was pretty disappointed that we had to skip all our planned activities, like the dolphin swim he had been so excited to do.  We didn’t go to the aquarium, to our favorite restaurants (though we did get take-out a couple of times from Sparky’s), on any day trips, or to any state parks.  We stuck to the condo, and I am definitely glad that we sprang for the more expensive location that’s right on the beach with a beautiful pool.  We were able to entertain ourselves for a week just going back and forth between the pool, the beach, and the condo.

You were perfectly happy with that plan, since we always have to drag you away from the pool to do anything cultural anyway.  We played a lot of Scrabble and took turns choosing which music videos to watch.  I chose Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” your dad chose M.C. Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This,” and you chose some YouTube thing I can neither understand nor remember—Hermit Gang or something. We had many cocktail hours, never put on dressy clothes, and generally had a relaxing time.

The trip home was intense.  During the week we were in the Keys, the coronavirus situation got worse, and it seemed like a bad idea to share airport and plane space with a bunch of people who had spent their time in Florida not very conscientiously.  Our rental car company graciously waived fees for returning the car at a different location, so we packed up the Nissan Altima with drinks, food, audiobooks, and concentrated bleach and hit the road for the 22-hour drive to Chicago.  We did it in two days, with some stretch breaks and a night in a hotel near Atlanta.  Let me tell you, it will be nice not to have to wipe down every surface with bleach solution the next time we go to a hotel, but we’re all still healthy, so I guess it was a smart choice.  It wasn’t easy, but you kids did a great job.  After spending the night in Chicago (and another massive surface wipe-down, of course), we loaded up our Subaru, returned the rental car, and drove home to our friends’ house.

Another weird kink in our lives right now is the fact that our house is under construction.  We were supposed to be house-sitting for friends who were out of the country on a research sabbatical, but unfortunately, they were required to return home.  A week after we got back from the Keys, we packed everything up from their house and went back Homer (our code name for our regular house).

Things here are slightly weird, since we don’t have a kitchen and we have a massive hole in the back yard, but we’re doing okay.  We have a makeshift kitchen in the basement, and I’ve learned to make your favorite pasta in the new Instant Pot.  It’s also very weird not to see the playground buzzing with activity on some of the beautiful days we’ve had lately.  Your dad has been doing a good job of getting you kids out in the back yard (the parts that are still intact) and into the open areas of the park to play Beamo, tag, and other running-around games.  We’ve been taking walks, attempting some home-school learning, and mostly doing fine.  You’re a homebody anyway, so it doesn’t seem to be too hard on you to stick around.

I do worry about your friendships suffering, though.  Things had been going so well for you socially this year—you’ve expanded your friend group and gotten some really good connections that I was excited for you to have going into junior high next year.  You’ve been doing some video chat and other online interactions with friends, and one even wrote you a letter.  It was a homeschool assignment, but still, it’s nice that he chose you to receive it.  Plus it gave me a good idea to assign you to write one back to him.

This was not how we were expecting you’d wrap up your elementary school experience, and I guess there’s still hope that you might have at least a little school in May or June.  Everything’s undecided for now, including your summer camps, so I guess all we can do is keep washing our hands and social distancing. I’m glad you got to spend time in the pool, though.  It was a mostly-bright week during a mostly-bleak time, and your vacation hair makes me smile.

Your current favorites:  The Simpsons, both the show and the comic collections; other comic collections, such as the Far Side and Dilbert; pasta; waffles; online chess; not brushing your hair; doing card and other magic tricks; and treading that line between sweet boy and surly teen.

We’re all on that line these days, regardless of age, so thank you for your help in getting through it.

Love,

Mom