To Calvin, on your twelfth birthday

As I sit here writing to you today, just shy of your birthday actually, I am thinking back through all my letters to you and realizing that this one is somehow easier than the last few. In many ways I feel like we’ve turned an important corner. I have always loved being your parent, but I have not always loved parenting you, and it has not always been easy. Now this year, finally, some breathing room. I think the key is a growing independence in your work, so that the demands on your time are coming more from inside you rather than from me, and that means less resistance on your part, less nagging on mine. These changes have returned to us the greater joys of our first years of homeschooling, and allowed us to grow closer, have more fun, even as the work gets more challenging.

Of course this was your most challenging year yet. Cell biology, chemistry, and nuclear energy in science; a return to the ancients in history; Algebra 2 for math, plus some coding and regular logic puzzles; a focus on origin stories, myths, and early legends in literature. We also studied geography, Spanish, and art, and while I couldn’t say what your favorite subject is—that seems to change weekly—I do know your least favorite is writing or composition. I think this is because it makes you nervous, the open ended nature of a blank page, and I hope to help you tackle that insecurity in the coming years.

A glaring omission above is the area of fine arts, but your dedication to that discipline seems so other that I give it its own paragraph. Theater, vocal music, instrumental music, and dance—you do it all. You performed in two more main stage shows with Young People’s Theatre this year: Spamalot and Cinderella, both professional level productions. You continued with ballet and tap classes through the year and learned so much in that time that you wowed us in your spring recital. You spent another great year with the Boychoir of Ann Arbor, signing the traditional opening solo in their Christmas concert in a beautiful, clear, angelic voice. In the fall you auditioned into the Regional Honors Choir so in February we took you to Chicago where you sang with kids from all over the Midwest, a wonderful experience. You are still truly excelling on the piano, too, and have a real talent for not just playing, but for feeling the music and making that emotion heard. But the best part of fine arts this year has been your immediate love and dedication to a new instrument: the bassoon. When you came to me in the fall of this school year and said they were looking for clarinetists to switch to the bassoon I was really nervous. This was an instrument I knew nothing about! But you were certain, and adamant. They sent you home with this expensive instrument and provided you with small group instruction in school while we got you a private teacher, and if we hadn’t already been pretty sure you sounded good, your private teacher’s amazement at the speed of your progress would have clued us in. This summer you will go to Blue Lake to study bassoon and have fun with other music geeks your age. It’s eleven days and nights that terrify me, but not you. You’re just excited.

You have always had this absence of social fear. Though you call yourself shy, and there are many instances where you choose to hang back in groups, ultimately you are happy to take on new things and plunge into new situations. You seem to just trust that you’ll be fine, knowing that you are self-reliant and unconcerned about what other people think. (For the most part. We all fall for those insecurities sometimes.) This year has seen us move a little farther away from the embrace of the homeschooling group as your schedule has started to clash with theirs. But this has not left you as bereft as I thought it might. Instead you have leaned more heavily into the neighborhood gang, and possibly into friendships with the kids you have met in band. Your base is shifting, as bases sometimes do at this age, but you seem completely unconcerned. 

These, then, are the pre-teen years. This will be the last of them, in fact, and they have not (yet?) brought the conflict and terror we had been told to prepare for. Instead I still see in you a softness, a kindness, a sweetness that keeps you young in my eyes, but also a burgeoning independence that is not the bane but the blessing of these years. We love you, we are so very proud of you, we really, truly enjoy you.

To Calvin, on your eleventh birthday

Last Friday we were at a local park with our homeschooling friends. It’s a large park, mostly mown grass over low, rolling hills. The moms sit in the shade and visit, and you and I have an agreement that as long as you are with other kids from our group, you can go anywhere in the park. I trust you, and you have always been worthy of it. I hadn’t seen you in a while, and mentioned to another mom how great it was that I didn’t need to know exactly where you were anymore, but that I still would have liked to put eyes on you once in a while.

 “Isn’t that him right there?” she asked “Is he wearing a blue hat?”

And yes, there you were, not far away and completely in sight. I hadn’t seen you, because I was looking for a smaller child.

When does this growing occur? Surreptitiously over night? But it’s not that I didn’t know you had grown. I’ve watched your pants slowly rise up over you ankles through the year, and scrambled to find new shoes before the warm weather. I know you are growing, so when is it that the discord between my memories and reality set in? That I don’t know. I’ve always thought myself in touch with your maturing, and only occasionally felt nostalgic or scared. But as your level of independence has skyrocketed over the past year, while I won’t say I wasn’t ready, I will admit I wasn’t quite expecting it. 

This newfound independence has been a really wonderful thing. Your homeschool studies have been far more self-directed this year, your focus increasingly self-controlled. We have continued our march through the subjects, taking on some really challenging matter, and your curiosity and deep way of thinking continues to awe me. We tackled some literary “great books” this year, and your commentary on Moby Dick and All Quiet on the Western Front especially left me wowed. You are really getting it. You really understand. Your love of science and the natural world increases, and your respect for our one and only earth brings me great joy. Twentieth century history has you filled with a level of indignation fit for the pre-teen that you are, and the vicarious shame you feel for the ridiculous actors in your Spanish videos is right on point. Fun note: you can draw a map of the United States from memory, and are almost finished learning the same for Europe. But your favorite topic lately is math. It was geometry this year, and though the whole year wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, you are nearly acing the course, and have asked to continue with math through the summer so that you can move on to the next level sooner.

And just as you continue to thrive in your academic life, you are also moving along well in your arts life. You have always had a fondness for the arts. You inherited your father’s talent at the piano, if not always his practice integrity, and this year you graduated from lesson books into repertoire. It is lovely to hear you play on the days that you are not arguing about it. You are less bored with choir, I think, and this year that has really been a place for you to shine. You had two small solos that you really nailed earlier in the year, and just this week you auditioned for a difficult part and earned it with your ready ability and vibrant performance. You also took tap and ballet this year and we were delighted to see how much you learned in that time. Enough, as it turned out, to earn a chorus (dancing and singing) roll in the the Young People’s Theater production of Beauty and the Beast this spring. You amazed us on that stage, and behind it. Your integrity and maturity really showed.

Learning and performing aside, though, you are growing into a sensitive, kind, funny young man. Your friends and family enjoy you and your teachers appreciate you. Not every moment is perfect. You fight about studying things you find unimportant, and become frustrated to the point of tears sometimes at making mistakes or failing to understand something new, but far and wide your most defining trait is being easy going and happy. I know we are approaching the traditional age of malcontent, but you still find joy in so many things that I think we have some time yet. The other things you are doing are so age appropriate, though, that they bring back memories from our own childhoods. You are discovering music, developing what will probably be your life-long sound track, and if I remember correctly that is beginning of the creation of a true self. A unique other. That, and you are developing your own brand of humor, which we find hilariously, and often shockingly, witty. Your parents will take some credit for that, thank you.

What it all means is that you are really becoming yourself. You spend even more time with friends—as much as possible with the neighbors, and also time with our homeschooling families. You like to spend time alone. And even though you still sleep with your blanket and know all the names of your stuffed animals, that is really just like me all through…well, really continuing now, except maybe the blanket part. The truth is, you are growing up and becoming the individual that only you, regardless of your parents, will become all on your own. 

You are becoming you. And we couldn’t be more proud, and we couldn’t love you more.

 

To Calvin, on your tenth birthday

Ten! Double digits!

You are so, so big. Nearly five feet tall, thin and athletic. You eat like a horse, play like an otter, and work like a little bee, though only when it suits you! It has been a wonderful year in many ways, and there is so much to remember and share.

We continued with your homeschooling this year. You are a quick and bright learner, but increasingly reluctant to put effort into things you don’t immediately see a benefit in. You love learning new things, but despise practicing once you believe you’ve mastered them. As our school year draws to a close you are fully parsing sentences, analyzing poetry, writing five paragraph essays with relative ease (if not relative interest), and reading voraciously at a nearly adult level. You have completed Algebra I, science 3-5, and world history up to the mid-nineteenth century. When you take an interest in something you attack with vigor, but a tendency toward easy boredom and apathy are your biggest challenges, and mine. It is hard to get you to work when you do not see the point.

You continued with both choir and piano this year and, to our great pleasure, seem to enjoy both greatly. This was your first year in the Boychoir of Ann Arbor Performing choir, and the schedule was the most rigorous you’d encountered to date, with long rehearsals two nights a week and practice at home. This January you auditioned for Young People’s Theater winter show, and learned a whole new dedication. It was a whim at the time, your audition, and though YPT is a local children’s theater organization, it turned out to be more selective, more professional, and more intense than we had expected. Hours and hours of rehearsals every week for three months culminating in four shows—two evening, two matinee—that were nearly Broadway quality. You loved it and worked very hard, and we were very proud of you, not just for your impressive performance in the show’s dance and chorus group, but also for meeting such a challenge head on.

Your involvement in the YPT show was just part of your continued growing up and away. You are developing life of your own, on your own. For the first time this year you expressed an interest in shopping for your clothing, and selected a specific hair style to wear as well. You almost unerringly choose to spend your free time with friends regardless of what other options we offer you. The kids in the neighborhood form your most frequent play group and you are always together when home. You love our Friday afternoons with our homeschooling group, too, and would spend any other days with those kids that are offered up. It gives us a warm feeling to see you develop in this way, and it is also freeing, as dad and I enjoy quiet evenings and afternoons together knowing that you are happy and having fun on your own. 

This is just a first step, and still a small one, toward our inevitable separating, and it is immeasurably wonderful to see you so well adjusted and socially prepared (see me thumb my nose at the naysayers who cautioned against homeschooling for its inadequacies in social training). You are a sensitive and caring child. You are patient with your friends’ younger siblings, and usually with your friends. You remove all creatures from the house with a cup and a piece of paper. We took you to a parks fishing event last summer but after spearing one innocent worm and watching the hook removed from the poor fish’s mouth you declared you’d had enough of that. You coo at almost everything living and feel no prejudice about young vs. old, carnivore vs. herbivore, fur vs. scales. This egalitarian attitude of yours tries my courage at times, but tugs at my heartstrings continually.

What a beautiful life we have, what a beautiful year it has been. And now you are ten. You have a whole day of fun planned for us that begins with hiking, continues with miniature golf, cookie baking, and our traditional evening downtown, picking out your birthday books and eating your birthday dinner of crab legs and key lime pie. 

We enjoy you. We enjoy spending time with you. We are proud of you. We love you. 

Love,
mom (& dad)

To Calvin, on your ninth birthday

You turn nine this year.

It sounds so much older than I imagine you in my mind. I still imagine you as that little toddler with that adorably tiny voice, and when you curl up with your blanket and stuffed animals to indulge in a good book, I still see that little boy in you. And yet, nine is also so much younger than I sometimes find you to be in those moments when your wisdom seems to outshine your years.

Last year I wrote to you about the battles of will and fights for independence we were having. The phase lasted all last summer, and in hindsight, this was you leaving the grammar stage and entering the logic stage. It was you growing tired of the following and parroting, and instead developing a strong sense of autonomy, fairness, and right and wrong, and honing your reasoning (and arguing) skills. Like all kids, you practice those skills on us, pushing the envelope and testing our patience, and, as with many things, you do this with vigor. Good questioning is both a gift and a curse in a growing child, and I would never take that away from you. It is your insane desire to question the world around you that we most want to indulge and develop in this stage. As infuriating as it can be, it is exactly this that we wish for you: that you don’t just accept things as they are, but ask why they are, and then study the answer. If the answer does not fit your sense of logic, then continue questioning and seeking until it does.

Of course while growing mentally by leaps and bounds, you are growing physically, too, and (finally!) you are beginning to resemble as much of me, your mom, as you always have your dad. You continue to swim at least once a week, and on occasion we run together. Last fall you ran your first one mile race and finished in under nine minutes. You were very proud, and so were we! Even more exciting for you, though, was learning to ride a bike last summer. You took to it then as most children do. I think it gives you sense of freedom. Together with your friends you ride for hours, inventing games and imagining together.

That is another new thing for you this year: local friends. Your great imagination and your kind, gentle nature has always made you a favorite in our homeschooling crowd, but this year you found friends in our neighborhood with whom you’ve developed a different kind of bond. You and our backyard neighbor have been all but inseparable. Her parents even started calling her Hobbes. And now the boy from across her street has made your dynamic duo into the musketeers. The three of you light up an afternoon with your make-believe and sports games. I love to hear you all imagining a scene of play, talking out the rules to a game of your own, or even working out your differences together. It is a special kind of growth and learning and it gives me great joy to see you develop in this way.

For all of your hours spent at the bus stop this year, though, we are still homeschooling. I worried briefly that your new friendships would change how you felt about our arrangement, but you are still thrilled be learning at home. And now that our days start earlier, immediately following the coming of the bus, that is, they seem to go more smoothly and end earlier, giving you greater free time to fill on your own, which you do either with a good book, or in highly imaginative play entirely of your own design. Your imagination, and your pure joy in play, amazes and delights me.

And what are you learning this year? We study math, Spanish, music, and language arts daily, and geography, history, and science alternately through the week. Science during these warming months has been hours spent in the woods, falling in love with nature and all it has to offer. In math you are just now beginning Algebra I. You tell anyone who asks that your favorite subject is history, but I think it is actually language arts because that is where you spend your time most eagerly and energetically. You are an able and voracious reader, and your writing skill grows exponentially by the year. You play the piano with enormous feeling, and new to you this year is singing. You are the first child of an alumnus to return to The Boychoir of Ann Arbor, the group your dad sang in as a young boy, and your musical talent glows brightly there; just last week you were invited to sing with the advanced choir for the summer. You are as proud of yourself for this as we are, I believe, and very excited, too.

We are proud of you for many things, and delighted in the person you are becoming.

And as always, forever, we love you very, very much.

Love,
mom (& dad)

To Calvin, on your seventh birthday,

    Here we are, another year past. As I get older the years seem to go by faster, something I’ve heard from others many times before, but never understood until now. And as the days blend together at a dizzying pace it becomes increasingly difficult to remember any one point in time. That is one of the reasons I want to write these letters to you: so that I will have at least a yearly record of our life together, an annual snapshot of your continuous growth. To try and stop time for even just a moment.

    As always, your seventh year has been one of great growth and development. Our days are still full, sometimes with schoolwork, other times with travels, or family, or friends, and still with lots and lots of play. Your boundless energy and enthusiasm are a constant source of joy for us, and sometimes a source of exhaustion, depending on whether you are running in circles inside the house or outside. Even when you are quiet you aren’t—watching you read a book is a matter of hilarity, and many times I have glanced over to see you reading in very odd positions, such as upside down. You love playing make-believe, by yourself or with others. There is no limit to your imagination and you can spend hours absorbed in worlds of your own making. You create with the same energy as well, on the sidewalk in chalk, or on the computer, or simply the old fashioned. We go through paper at a rate that would be appalling if it weren’t for your extensive imagination. Of all your many gifts, it is your imagination that gives me the greatest pleasure.

    By this time we are marking your growth a little differently, as “leaps and bounds” is replaced by “steady and continual”. The one true milestone to mark this year is your first two lost teeth (the two bottom middle, both lost on the same night in May). Otherwise, you’ve been in the same car seat for years now, your bike will see an extra summer, and even your clothes are lasting longer than a year at a time. But “steady and continual” is a good, healthy way to grow, and healthy you have certainly been, other than summer allergies and the occasional cold. You do still experience the night time seizures, but they are increasingly infrequent (only a few over the past year) and the doctors are confident that they will stop entirely before adulthood.

     “Leaps and bounds” does still apply when it comes to your mental growth, though, and our homeschooling year has been an adventure. We spend our mornings in formal lessons now—a little math, a little grammar, some spelling, and of course history and science—but I have tried to make these flexible, keeping them challenging but attainable, and following your interests when possible. This year you mastered multiplication, long division, and sentence diagramming, and are currently following a rather deep interest in theoretical astrophysics. You read like it’s going out of style, practically inhaling books, yet you always surprise me with your comprehension when you’re done. It is not uncommon for you to grab the encyclopedia to answer a question. Your insatiable curiosity and steel trap of a memory continue to amaze.

    Learning alongside you is a constant bright spot in my life—not only the moments of great revelation, but also our more casual discussions and everyday discoveries. We don’t just learn at the kitchen table, but also at the zoo, in the yard, on hikes, at the store, on vacation. Last summer took us to Niagara Falls and your first production at Stratford. It also took us camping and to Mackinac Island. The fall and winter found us alternately in Chicago and Harbor Springs with family we love, and we have many more trips planned for the future.  

     What else is new? Last year you learned how to swim, now you know all four IM strokes and continue to amaze your teachers with your youthful mastery of the backstroke and butterfly. You played soccer for the spring season this year, and took a gymnastics course as well. Last year you had your first speaking part in a stage play, while this year you performed in two more productions (Alice in Wonderland, and Following the Gnome), even playing a lead in the second (you made a wonderful Cheshire Cat, then an adorable friendly dragon, and forgot none of your lines). You continue to excel at the piano, though you like to give your teacher (your dad) a rough time in lessons every now and again.

    This, too, is new: this sense of independence and strength of character that sometimes clashes with us, your parents. You were never one for temper tantrums, but you have your own way of seething, and this year you’re stretching your youthful legs and grabbing for greater autonomy. I can’t say it hasn’t been frustrating for us, but it is good to see you expand in your space and challenge the world around you, and every rough moment is surpassed at least twofold by delightful ones. Because whatever else you are, you are still a completely happy and loving child who delights in his surroundings, in his family, in his blanket (yes, he’s still around!), and in almost every experience he encounters.

And always, forever, we love you very much.

Love,
mom (& dad)