Dear Miles,

I’ve lost track of how many weeks we are into social distancing, but it certainly seems like years.  We bent the rules a little bit a couple of weeks ago and met Mubby and Skitter at a nature preserve near Grinnell for a picnic, a hike, and an exchange of items.  Skitter had garden plants for me, Mubby had some of my old books for you, and we had some of your books for Mubby to read to Aleks and Vera.  She spends an hour reading to them online every night, so naturally she burned through her personal kids’ books collection pretty quickly.  We lent her a big stack of ours, and she said Aleks and Vera have really been enjoying them.

Overall, you seem to be handling the isolation pretty well.  You have class Zoom sessions multiple times a week, not only for your homeroom, but also for band and ELP.  You Facetime and do Google Hangouts with friends, and of course you have your brothers.  That is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Sometimes you’re so creative and fun, designing treasure hunts and mysteries for them to solve, and other times you lose your patience quickly.  Still, it makes me smile that you choose to come into the bunkbed room in the evening when I read to Callum.  It’s interesting to hear your perspective on his bedtime stories.  You’re very attuned to the dated quality of some of the books from my childhood, including a particularly egregious Raggedy Ann and Andy book that portrays Ann as a timid wimp and Andy as a rambunctious mess-maker.  “It’s stereotypical, borderline sexist, and has no story,” you said.  “It’s LOVELY,” said Callum.  I can see both sides.  The overarching lesson of the book is about good manners, which are valuable to learn, but I agree with you that the author could have provided more nuanced examples.

You’re very involved in Callum’s life, and I enjoy watching you care for him.  You like to sit in on his Zoom sessions to make sure he’s participating and listening.  If all the preschoolers had such a dedicated older brother, maybe the teacher wouldn’t have to use the Mute All feature so much.  Honestly, I really admire the hard work your teachers are doing to keep involved in your education without face-to-face interactions.  It’s not easy, but maybe it’s good for them to be in their students’ position of having to be learning all the time.

I have to say that you seem pretty satisfied.  You’re disappointed that your camps (College for Kids and FilmScene) will probably not happen, but generally speaking, you’re handling it well.

Speaking of FilmScene, they sponsored a contest recently in which they challenged people to recreate movie scenes.  You and your brothers and I had a blast doing it, and one of our entries got second place.  You didn’t happen to be in that one, but the whole project was a group effort.  You helped art direct it, and you snapped the photo.  The top three all won enormous bags of popcorn, sodas, and candy, which was plenty for our whole gang to share.  I love doing projects like that with you, and this canned life has provided some good opportunities.

The weather has been very up-and-down this month, including a storm that brought enough snow for your brothers to build a snowman and throw snowballs (you declined to go outside).  We’ve had some rain and chilly days, but we’ve also had some really beautiful ones.  Just about the only sport you have any interest in playing is badminton, and we’ve had some great badminton nights in the backyard.  We’re not fantastic players, but I think we’re getting better, and you mostly keep a good attitude along the way.

In fact, I have to say that you’ve been pretty pleasant lately.  Maybe all this time to yourself just suits you, and it’s the outside world that stresses you out.  I hope you can find a life balance over the years that will keep you mostly happy while also allowing some interaction with the rest of the world.

Your current favorites:  Dungeons and Dragons (more watching YouTube videos about it than actually playing it), The Simpsons, pasta, Honey Nut Cheerios, mocking the poor bedside manner of Dr. Grizzly in The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food, Code.org, and cookies.

It may be too much to ask for your geniality to last for the rest of the summer (or however long we need to be cloistered for safety), but in the meantime, I’ll just enjoy it.  I’ll know you’ll be glad when we get a working dishwasher again, because you do not enjoy being the working dishwasher.  Unlike Tobin, who is always scheming up ways to earn money to finance whatever his obsession of the moment might be, you seem content to coast along.  I guess you trust that your dad and I will meet all your needs, which is fair.  I know I won’t have you for very many more years, so I’m secretly not too disappointed that we’re stuck together.

Love,

Mom