Dear Callum,

We’re on the eve of our first big vacation in two years. I asked you if you remembered flying. I figured you probably did, because your last flight was when you were five, and you remember a lot of things. Last night we were reading a book about Leonardo da Vinci, and there was a little quiz at the end. You correctly answered “apprentice” to one of the questions, and when I asked you how you knew that, you said, “It was in the book.” I didn’t remember reading that, but what counts is that you did. Anyway, your answer as to what you remember about flying in an airplane: “There’s a lot of waiting.”

This will be our first time flying masked. Covid rates are down nation-wide, so we’re pretty comfortable about making the trip, but I am insisting that we keep our masks on for the whole time at the airport and the flight. That will mean a long time without using food and beverages as entertainment. I don’t know if our plane will be the kind with individual A/V screens, but I hope so. You and Artemis have chosen to sit together, which is probably a good plan. You two get along well, and hopefully you can keep each other occupied with Switch games, videos, and joke-telling.

Tobin brought a cold home from school. Our school district ended its mask mandate a couple of weeks ago, just in time for our family to have our first cold in two years. I was in a panic for a while until he got three negative Covid tests, because I probably would have lost my mind if we’d had to cancel or postpone the trip. We tried hard to contain the cold to Tobin–we all masked in common areas of the house, he ate socially distanced from the rest of us, and I used a whole lot of cleaning wipes on doorknobs, light switches, and toilet flushers. Still, probably because you are not good at keeping your hands off your face, you were Victim Two. Tobin missed two days of school, but he’s feeling much better now. I’m hoping that by the time we fly, you’ll be doing a lot better too. Right now, you’re pretty cheerful and energetic, just with a runny nose. I bought a bunch of mini Kleenex packs. Your mask will probably be disgusting by the end of our travel day.

Your class is doing a readers’ theater version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears tomorrow, and you’re so excited and proud. You’ll miss a bit of your school day tomorrow due to our travel plans, but fortunately the play is in the morning. Your teacher said she would record it and send the link out, but you know I’ll be watching as it happens. You are playing Mama Bear and Narrator 2. A big advantage to online school is that you can participate even when you’re not feeling your best without exposing your classmates.

One thing I have learned for sure during this pandemic is that making plans is a fraught task. Our current hope is that you’ll return to in-person school in the fall. We had originally planned for you to go once you were vaccinated, but a few different factors, including how great your online teacher is, influenced us to stay with the online program for you. Now, evidence is showing that the vaccine dose you got is almost worthless in terms of preventing symptomatic Covid (especially the omicron variant that surged through our part of the world in January). It does seem to still provide protection against serious disease and hospitalization, which is good, but is disappointing to learn that it doesn’t do all we hoped. I am optimistic that the CDC will recommend a booster dose for your age group soon. In the meantime, we’ll keep masking.

A week or two ago, your dad had just finished putting lotion on you before bed. He was kneeling right at eye level with you, and he hugged you and told you how much he loves you. I was standing nearby, touched by the sweet scene, but I could tell you had something on your mind. You wiggled out of his grip, not exactly trying to get away from him, but  making some space for yourself so you could say what you were thinking. “I just love darn wings,” you said.  Then you started describing your ideal chicken wing, which would be a long bone that you could hold with one hand on each end and a huge ball of meat in the middle.

You’ve been into chicken wings lately.

Your current favorites: Wild Kratts, telling me animal facts you learned on Wild Kratts, setting timers on our Google Home to remind you when to stop watching Wild Kratts on your recess break and return to class, pizza, waffles, toast, chicken wings, playing outside, and bedtimes stories (especially The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and the Magic Treehouse series). We often share the job of reading, alternating pages or chunks. That’s particularly useful in The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, because the illustrations are so evocative that they trigger my acrophobia. The downside of how well you can read is that I cannot get away with skipping paragraphs in the more boring books. Sometimes bedtime gets long. That’s okay, though. Time with you is never time wasted, even if I wish you’d shake up your reading preferences rather than choosing the same books over and over.

I’m so excited to have some time away with you, Callum. We’ve been talking about it for so long now, and more recently packing and preparing, and I’m so glad we’ve almost made it. Every day with you is special, but vacation time with you is the most special of all.

Love,

Mommy