If last year’s birthday felt totally eye-glazed and desolate… the year that followed was like being trapped in a box but actually, the box helped you break out while stuck inside.
I’m not sure where to begin as far as how you’ve forged ahead, and continued growing, refusing to fall behind or be let down. Yeah, things have sucked. Yeah, this wasn’t how kids are supposed to start first grade and their formal education, or learn the aleph-bet, or start experimenting with numbers.
There’s a lot you got ‘robbed’ of this year but you otherwise may not have had such a concentrated dose of familial closeness, bonding with Zooey especially, and learning to communicate long distance. Or taking on certain hobbies or trying new things.
But spending a year in close quarters with your older siblings gave you a boost. We’ve worked on your self-expression. You’ve taken up all kinds of interests – sewing, drawing characters, sending emails to family, making your own fashions.
A whole creative side we hadn’t really totally understood or seen has been unleashed. Unleashed. Making do, using what you have, turning nothing into everything.
At one point you picked up a plastic bag and turned it into a one-piece.
You’ve confronted fears, Nettles. Your year of six kicked off as we fled corona in New York to walk into lockdown at home. Now, as you embrace seven as a school-age kid (remote or not), you’re better equipped to look ‘scary’ in the face. Whether that’s peeking at a movie you’re not sure about, talking openly about how corona makes you feel, or, sometimes, just speaking at all when you’re not 100% sure.
As we come out of it this year, I know you’ve got a lot to hold on to. Perhaps more than if we hadn’t gone through it at all. And since we don’t really have a choice in this matter… and you’ve gotten so much better at being in the moment, grabbing what’s in front of you, making now count… we learned together that we don’t have to spend all of our time all that worried, Nettles.
Whadya got: