Beatrix: Eight and a Half

Hey B,

It’s been rainy all day, so right now you’re sitting just over there, still in your tie-dye PJs, reading. It’s a dragon book. Part of a very long series of dragon books that Lily read before you and that, by the iron law of little siblings, you therefore think is the pinnacle of cool.

We’re still deep in that phase, in case you were wondering. Lily, who starts high school in a few weeks, remains your favourite person in the world. As the kids in your classes and camps start to break out more adolescent internet slang, you bring it home like you used to bring home acorns and rocks. “The boys in my camp call everything skibidi ohio rizz now.” You’ll say. And then Lily will wince, and groan, and tell you they need to touch grass and you will laugh and agree and it’s perfect.

One of the things I always think about when I write one of these letters is how you two will be as adults, whenever it is that you read them. A fixture of our life, since you were born, is that you are sometimes the littler kid at the table, and sometimes the only kid. You have one home and Lil has two, and you have both had to figure out what that means for sibling-ing. But you contain dualities and multitudes of your own. You have multiple citizenships, multiple languages, multiple cultures, in a way that is different than anything I, or your mom, had growing up. Right now you flit around and between them and mostly just need little reminders. “Remember the American cousins play rougher.” “Remember that you’ll have to throw some elbows to get into the conversation, here.” For now, we work as the bridges, the interpreters, the gravitational centre to help it all hang together. But over time you’ll make your own sense of it and I am fascinated to see what shape that’ll take.

This letter’s a bit late, it’s been more than six months since the last one. This happened with your sis, too. See, I decided for both of you that nine and a half would be the last one I’d write, at least publicly. 20 letters, from infancy to middle school, or near enough — any older than that and I worried that I’d be writing about things in the moment that your super-online friend group might find. Once you’re big enough for that to be a real possibility, it doesn’t feel fair to you. But it means there are only three more — including this one! — and so I end up putting them off waiting for the right time to write them. Which is, I know, foolish. There isn’t a righter time to write a letter to your kid than the moment you have the time and think to do it. So here we are, on a rainy, dragony Saturday.

You did sleep-away camp for part of this summer and we wrote you something every day, and you wrote us, too. I loved that. Posting these ones online is a tradition I have loved, and I will finish the batch, but I will also be keeping all the postcards you sent us. My favourite, from your very first day of camp, in your careful rounded penmanship, said “Today we had a lice check and a swim test. I passed both!”

The house is still filled with art. Art and books. Your bedroom filled with art, so is your studio, so is our office. The coffee table is full of books, and so is the front hall. There are two (two!) papier-mâché pumpkins sitting on the stereo speakers, and the upstairs landing is covered with still-lifes. You did a series of prints of a high-top converse shoe in various colours for a print-making class, and no one who sees them can believe an eight-year-old did them. To be fair, you’re eight and a half.

You’re already on to the next book. Time flies.

I love you, B.

Daddy