AN ENTIRE YEAR

Dear Spike: 

It's been a year, now, since everything hit the fan. Since travel stopped and schools closed. Since friends stopped hanging out and families stopped getting together. Since we stopped going out to eat and started wearing masks everywhere we did go.

It's been a tough year. And while we have been very fortunate — we have not gotten sick and we have not lost our sources of income — I wanted to acknowledge that good fortune does not make this hardship easy. Especially not for a 13-year-old child.   

I can see how difficult this has been for you. I can imagine myself at your age, and ask myself how I would have felt in this circumstance, and realize that it is a terrible thing for a young teenager to be more or less stuck with their parents for an entire year. 

But you've handled this with aplomb. You have not complained. You have not thrown a fit. You have not lost sight of the fact that the sacrifices you are making are for the benefit of our community and, in particular, the most vulnerable people in that community. (Not everyone sees things in this way, but you do.)

I have been hesitant to suggest there is a light at the end of this tunnel, but it does seem that we may be coming nearer to a place where something like the normal we once knew becomes the normal we will know. We will travel again. You will go back to school. You will see your friends and extended family. We will go to our favorite restaurants. We will explore the world with our faces exposed to the sun. 

Hold on. This has been very hard, and it may continue to be for some time to come, but we are getting closer. I do believe that.

It's been a tough year. But you are a tough person. You always have been. And I am very proud of you.

Love,
dad