Dear Artie,

Fall is here, and it’s as busy as usual. Marching band has been taking up a lot of your time lately, with football games, competitions, showcases, and parties keeping us all busy. You’re not a huge fan of the marching component of marching band. You said to me, “I wish there was a kind of band where you just there and play music.” I don’t know if you were being deliberately obtuse or not, but when I replied, “You mean like a band concert?”, you agreed that that was a good idea.

Sophomore year seems to be going well so far. You’re taking challenging classes, including the honors versions of English and French, as well as AP World History. It seems like you’re more challenged this year. When I poke my head into your room each night to say goodnight to you, you’re often doing homework. Last year you didn’t have to do homework very often, so I’m glad you are getting things done of your own volition. I’m also glad you have access to thought-provoking coursework and good teachers. When your dad and I went to your school’s Parents’ Night earlier in the fall, we were impressed with your teachers and the content you’ll be learning.

While you do still spend a lot of time in your room, you’ve been getting out and doing things (besides marching band) too. You went to the Homecoming Dance with friends (and foiled my efforts to get pictures), you joined us on a trip to the ice skating rink on a recent no-school day, and you’ve been a pleasant and entertaining member of the family cocktail hour squad. I’m often impressed with what a funny, intelligent person you’re becoming. We’re coming up on a school board election in our community, and there are a handful of candidates who are using the dog-whistle of “parental involvement” to push for things like removing LGBTQ issues, the discussion of slavery and the Civil Rights movement, and other foolhardy efforts. I take such joy in hearing your thoughts and ideas, even when I don’t fully agree with them or hadn’t considered them. Why would parents want their children to only be exposed to concepts they, the parents, already know? One of the greatest pleasures of my life is learning from you. What a loss it would be to only hear you spout things I taught you. Plus we’d be SOL on the France portion of our Europe trip. I’m counting on you for that.

You took the PSAT recently. You have a while yet before college, but taking that kind of step in the collegiate direction felt a little wild. You said the first three sections were surprisingly easy and the last section was surprisingly hard, so I guess we’ll see how it all sorts out. You haven’t yet expressed any particular opinions on where you’d like to attend college or what you’d like to study, but I’m not too concerned about that. I hadn’t thought any of that through too much at your age either.

We’re all up to date on our Covid vaccines now, which eases my mind a bit as you attend school unmasked this year. Of course, you managed to catch it last year even wearing  mask most of the time. There’s no really effective way to mask during band and at lunch, and I want you to be able to enjoy your school experience. You got over it pretty easily then, and now that our vaccines are re-upped, there’s no reason to think we wouldn’t all do okay if it hits our house again. Callum is the wildcard, due to his immunosuppression, but we’ll just have to do our best and take comfort in knowing that his doctors said most patients in his position do fine with Covid. It’s funny to think that it’s in all likelihood a permanent part of our lives now. Since I plan to live to 100, I’ll live over half my life in a Covid world. You’ll live the great majority of yours in one. Fortunately we have access to vaccines, good hospitals, and other valuable advantages. It’s hard for me, because my instinct is to do anything and everything I can to protect you and your siblings, but I guess I need to relax my grip a bit in order to let you develop into interesting people.

Perhaps I should take some of my own advice from above: I can’t expect to hold you as tightly as I want to and still have you grow, learn, and explore. It’s a matter of balance. You’re a smart and trustworthy person, and there’s nothing I want more than for you to grow into your own self-determined future.

Your current favorites: the French singer/songwriter Zaz, cream soda, Goldfish crackers and Honey Nut Cheerios, pasta in many shapes, the shows Breaking Bad and Lost, exclusively wearing comfy clothes, using the Scratch programming language to build games, schooling me on the subtleties of modern slang, and sleeping late.

Every conversation I have with you makes me think, and a lot of them make me laugh, too. I love you, you’re important to me, and I’m so glad to know you.

Love,

Mom