Dear Callum,

The summer is over, and now you’re a first grader. Because you can’t be vaccinated yet, we decided to keep you in online school for now. Unlike Tobin, who is champing at the bit to return to in-person school, you’re perfectly happy with the decision. You say it’s because you’re afraid of getting COVID, and that may be true to some extent, but you also are nervous about change. You had a mostly good experience last year, so you’re fine with a lot more Zooms.

As it turns out, this year so far is going even better than last year. You’re already familiar with all the software tools, and your teacher is great. She’s really organized and seems to have an excellent handle on how to manage her class. I bet she’s a fantastic in-person teacher too, but I’m very grateful that you have her this year. She’s kind and personable, and you were excited to meet her for real when we went to her house last weekend to pick up some additional school supplies she gathered for her students. You also think she’s good-looking, which doesn’t hurt.

Photo by Gary Clarke

Last year it took you a while to feel comfortable participating in class discussions, but this year we’ve had almost the opposite problem. You sometimes need reminders to quietly raise your hand and wait to be called on rather than unmuting your mic and blurting out a contribution. You have a decent sense of when it is and isn’t appropriate to chime in, so it’s not a terrible situation, but we’ll keep practicing. In any case, I’m glad you’re actively involved in class.

You love to do spin-off activities, whether suggested or of your own invention. During your first week of school, your teacher read you a story about a refugee girl whose only friend in her new home was a rock onto which she’d painted a face. I’m not sure you got everything that story had to offer, but you had fun making a rock friend of your own. You also like making swords and other weapons out of a kit that was intended for making blanket forts. I will never understand it, and I know I’m not the only weapon-disinclined parent to feel dismayed about it. You don’t exclusively make weapons, though. You made yourself a little reading nook out of cement blocks in the back yard, complete with a cup holder and a little resting pad for the book. You took me that’s in case you want to take a break from reading and make a prediction of what will happen next in the story.

Before the summer ended, we took a mini-vacation. You had fun kayaking and swimming, but I think your favorite part was making friends with a donkey at a wildlife park. You loved that guy. Your other favorite aspect of the trip was taking showers. The cottage we rented didn’t have a bathtub, so you took showers out of necessity. You weren’t so sure about that at first, but Tobin was helpful about showering with you. Once we got home, you decided that showers were your thing moving forward. I think you’ve only taken about two baths since we got back several weeks ago, and the rest of the time you’ve used the downstairs shower. You really like using grown-up shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, too. Sometimes you use them to an unsanctioned extent, and I have to send you back into the shower for an additional rinse after you get out. You’ve gotten into the habit of drawing a little friend for yourself in the condensation on the shower wall. You tell me his name is Cookie Dough.

I’m proud of all the growing and learning you’re doing, Callum. Your reading skills are getting stronger all the time. When it’s your turn to read aloud in school, you glide right through it. You like to do things “right,” which sometimes makes it hard for you to sound out words when you’re writing. You don’t like to guess, so you want me to tell you exactly how to spell everything. I recognize that you’ll learn more if you try on your own, so I prefer not to just give you answers, but sometimes I cave. It will be interesting to see how your approach changes when you go to school in person and the teacher doesn’t have the bandwidth to spell words for every student. We haven’t decided yet whether you’ll go in person as soon as you’re vaccinated. As much as I know it would be good for you, you’re also having a great experience online this year, and it might be hard on you to switch mid-year and be the new kid in a mostly-new situation. You’ve been to your home elementary school plenty of times, for preschool and for your brother’s events, but it’s been a while. That’s something your dad and I will have to decide when the moment arrives.

We still don’t have a firm timeline for when you’ll receive your vaccines, though we’re optimistic that it could be yet this fall. I read conflicting information all the time, so I’m not investing emotionally in any estimate that I see. It will be a huge relief, because while the vaccines don’t prevent all COVID infections, they absolutely reduce the risk of serious cases and hospitalizations. As a healthcare employee, I see the daily statistics about COVID+ inpatients at our local hospital, and I look especially closely at the number of pediatric inpatients. The numbers have been growing, slowly but consistently, and I know many parents are feeling the same kind of stress we are. Medical professionals definitely are. In the meantime, we’re doing our part by taking precautions to keep you and your brothers as safe as we can, while trying to give you social and recreational opportunities as much as possible. It’s a tough balance, but we’re doing our best.

Your current favorites: pizza, the Pokémon cartoons Tobin showed you, PBSKids games, building things with sticks and tape, cuddling with your stuffed animals at bedtime, and exercising. You’re pretty good at burpees. You’ve been playing Simon Says on your school Zooms, and you wanted to play it with me the other night. You had me doing all kinds of squats and lunges and pushups, and I was a little sore the next day.

You’re smart and funny and always have something interesting to say. You love to think and interpret your world, and I am so happy to watch and listen as you do it.

Love,

Mommy