Dear Artemis,

This month, you completed your time as a junior high student. Because our school district only has seventh and eighth grades in the junior high, and you spent your seventh grade year doing online learning, you really only had one year of the true junior high experience. It was a good year, though. You’ve made some good friends (all of whom now use names and pronouns I wasn’t expecting), got excellent grades (straight-As with some A-pluses as well), and grew several inches.

You had an appointment yesterday in Orthopedics to assess the state of your scoliosis. A growth spurt is a time when curves often get worse, so we were relieved to learn that the your curve is holding steady at 21%. You are very responsible about wearing your brace and doing your physical therapy exercises, and it’s great to see your hard work paying off. A 21% curve is absolutely livable and not something that would require surgery. One item of note is that you are nowhere near the end of your growth. You probably have several more inches of height yet to achieve, and as long as you continue your good brace use until your growth is complete, you should be just fine. You’re already taller than me, and I’m working on accepting that fact emotionally.

As far as I can tell, you don’t seem too freaked out about starting high school. You’ll have band camp for a few days in early August, which will give you a chance to check things out, but you never got any kind of formal orientation. I remember going to the high school as an eighth grader and walking through an abbreviated version of my schedule and meeting my teachers. I haven’t seen anything like that planned for you, but maybe it happens later in the summer. Your high school is big and has a lot to offer, but I could also see it being overwhelming.

I don’t know if you feel more anxiety than you express, but from the outside, you seem pretty chill about everything. You have your occasional emotional fluctuations, which is to be expected at this life stage and as part of the general human experience, but mostly you’re even-keeled. The biggest smiles I’ve seen from you lately are when I give you updates about my recent book publication. I feel like you’re one of the people who’s most proud of me, and there is truly no greater honor than to have my teenage kid be proud of me.

We were hoping to get your parotid tumor surgery completed early in the summer in order to give you as much healing time as possible before you were expected to play a trombone. Unfortunately, scheduling that has been a big source of frustration. Your surgeon wants to do the surgery in the main hospital operating room, because the nursing staff there are more experienced and better trained in this type of surgery. Apparently the kind of tumor you have (benign, for anyone new readers) is more common in adults than children or teenagers, so your surgeon is concerned that the nursing staff at the Children’s Hospital won’t be as well-equipped to assist him. At your pre-surgery consultation, the surgeon noted that the tumor is small and asymptomatic. It was only discovered incidentally during an MRI for scoliosis. He said that it could have been ten years before it grew big enough to be noticeable. In ten years, you will be an adult, and there would be no question about which operating room to use. So maybe it’s not really the case that the tumor is more common in adults, but rather that it rises to the level of being problematic more often in adults. Maybe there are tons of teenagers running around with tumors in their parotid glands and they won’t realize it until adulthood.

In any case, right now we’re waiting to hear whether the surgeon’s request to work on you in the main hospital will be granted, and that will give us our final answer on your surgery date. At the moment, his request has been denied, but the scheduler told me he was going to have a face-to-face meeting with the Chief of Surgery to plead his case. If he succeeds, your surgery will be July 20. If he doesn’t, it’s back to the drawing board for scheduling. I don’t think this surgery has an enormously challenging recovery period, but still, I want you to feel fully up-to-snuff before you have to march around a football field playing a trombone. Another possibility is nerve damage, since a major facial nerve runs through the parotid gland. They’ll do their best to avoid it, but it’s a potential complication. The good news is that it’s usually not permanent, but it could make trombone-playing difficult. At least you’ll wear a mask to school, so any facial weakness or drooping won’t be too obvious.

Photo by Gary Clarke

You served as Dungeon Master for the first time playing Dungeons & Dragons with a group of friends, and you seem to have really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to get the group together for another session, because no one’s summer schedule seems to coincide. It’s a shame, because it’s a funny hobby and a nice group of kids. Hopefully you’ll find a time soon. I remember Dungeons & Dragons being controversial when I was a kid, with Reagan-era moralizers clutching their pearls about how it would surely lead to Satanism. I’m glad that moral panic has waned. I think of it as a pretty wholesome way to spend time, having imaginary adventures with friends.

I’ve been thinking about the pandemic and how we are creeping back toward a normal life. I am completely fine with some concessions—wearing a high-quality mask when indoors is no big deal to me, and you and your siblings seem fine doing it at school. I fear that a lot of people, in their pandemic fatigue, are taking unnecessary risks. I took you and your brothers to a movie yesterday, and we picked one that was not a new release and at a time when it was unlikely to be crowded. We wore masks the whole time and, instead of getting snacks from the theater, we stopped by McDonald’s afterward and got McFlurries to go. Is that such a sacrifice? I don’t understand it when people refuse to do the smallest things to protect themselves and others. There are so many wonderful, fun things we still get to do, and I’m grateful that you and your brothers maintain good attitudes about taking some measures of civic and personal responsibility.

Your current favorites: Mario Maker; pasta; ice cream; Doritos; root beer; sleeping late; telling jokes; playing Wordle with Mubby, Aunt Suzy, and me; avoiding all exercise and outdoor experiences; and making silly faces when I try to take your picture. More often, lately, you’ve been giving genuine smiles. Your smile makes me smile.

I love you, my tall and still-growing child. Not every step of this life is easy, but you are handling the challenges you face with aplomb. Keep up the great work.

Love,

Mom