My dear Artemis,

It doesn’t help that I’m a week late in posting this, but I was surprised to see your first day of school pictures among my possible photos to include this month. It’s hard to believe that you’ve been a sophomore for less than a month, because you’ve slipped back into your routine without a struggle. Actually, that’s not completely true; waking up early for school is a minor struggle, and it’s only going to get strugglier once jazz band starts later in the fall. Nonetheless, even that issue isn’t too serious. You always make it to school on time, even if it sometimes requires a few jostles to get you out of bed. You’ve even been a reasonably enthusiastic participant in the post-Hawkeye game stadium cleanup the marching band does as a program fundraiser. That requires getting up very early on a Sunday morning and picking up the trash left the previous day by sports fans. It’s not something I expected you to do willingly, but I think you have fun hanging out with friends and eating the doughnut holes provided by the band teachers.

I enjoyed attending your back-to-school night a week or so ago. Your dad and I walked through your schedule, met your teachers, and got some insight into what a typical day is like for you. You’re taking several advanced classes this year, and your teachers indicate that many students find this is the time they have to start putting in some real effort. I have, more than once, seen you doing homework, so I guess you’re on the right track.

The time is coming soon to sign up for PSATs and AP tests. It’s funny to imagine that you are already taking tests that will affect your college admissions and credits, and it’s even funnier to think about how recently it feels like I was doing those same tasks. You haven’t yet expressed any particular area of study or university you hope to attend, but I hope as you continue to take a variety of classes you’ll discover what speaks to you the most. For now, you’ve chosen to take Honors English and French, as well as AP World History. It seems like the humanities are the areas that you enjoy the most, but you said you’re really enjoying biology this year. You also said it was because you have a lot of friends in that class, but I had a good impression of the course from what the teacher described. I think your school has a lot of good teachers and interesting classmates who will challenge you.

It can sometimes be difficult to pry you out of your room, but now and then you surprise me and want to be included in an adventure. We went to a Cedar Rapids Kernels game, and while it was not successful for the baseball players (“The Kernels got popped,” you quipped), we still had a nice night. It was a beautiful evening, and we ate a lot of snacks and saw fireworks. You also joined us on a trip to the swimming pool on a particularly hot Labor Day. I hear you were pretty daring on your several trips to the pool during Mubby-Skitter week, but I had never personally seen you jump off a high dive before. It was good to see you plunge in and even better to see you bob up. We always do a lot of swimming on our Florida Keys trips, but this is the first year Tobin has gotten really into going to the pool in town during the summer. It was nice to have you along for one final trip before the pool season ended.

You recently spearheaded an effort among your siblings to pool your money to replace a video game you lost at some point. Among the three of you, you got the money together and ordered Super Mario Brothers Odyssey. You’ve all been playing it a lot lately, and you encouraged me to give it a try too. I don’t think it’s even the most recent game in the Mario series, but it’s certainly worlds ahead of the Mario games I played as a kid.

It’s notable that the games you most enjoy range from the super visually realistic (such as the games you play on the Oculus VR headset) or stylistic (such as the meticulously-crafted Mario and Zelda games) to the very visually simple (Minecraft and online chess). I appreciate that you can see the value in both. There’s a place for simplicity and strategy along with enjoying the labor of many talented artists and programmers. It’s useful to be able to enjoy and understand multiple approaches to the world.

Your current favorites: Minecraft, Super Mario Odyssey, online chess, pasta, Knoppers, ice cream, walking to school with your friend Jacob, wearing sweatpants, and sleeping late. You don’t love marching band, but you like the fact that it’s going to count as a PE credit in school. That seems fair.

You’re funny and witty and have interesting things to say. You’re not really very sophomoric. One of my favorite things is when you linger over family cocktail hour and don’t run off to your room as soon as you finish your cream soda. You always have interesting thoughts and opinions to share. You are developing into a person I’m genuinely interested in knowing better, and not just because you were once my sweet baby.

You still my sweet baby, even if you’re way taller than me. One day you’ll admit it.

Love,

Mom