Beatrix: Nine

Hey nugget,

You’re asleep right now. I don’t know if this will be true when you grow up, too, but as a kid you are part cat, and will regularly sleep 11-12 hours solid. How do you do that? I find it tricky to sleep in past 7:30 most days. So on a lazy Saturday morning like this, your mom and I make coffee, and read books or check up on the world, and an hour or so later you’ll meander downstairs and curl up in the pink armchair and giggle at The Simpsons for half an hour before breakfast. I love lazy Saturday mornings.

The “checking up on the world” is pretty rough right now. I don’t know what your memories will be of it when you grow up. Or how the history will be taught. But in the moment, a lot of it feels really bad. Up in Canada we have leaders openly campaigning on hateful, self-interested platforms. And for your family in the states, the last few weeks have just been a flood of destruction and cruelty from a leader who ran on a promise to do those things, and won. We talk a lot about it at dinner as a family, and one of the things I see you struggle with is why. Why would people vote for that? How do you have empathy for someone cheering for that? We answer as best we can but I know it’s still a sticking point for you. It is for me, too.

One thing it makes me want to write for you, though, is something about change. About what happens when the world changes. Which is that most people want to pretend that it hasn’t. It feels very scary to imagine that everything is different, and right now a lot of people — grown ups, not just kids! — are trying to tell themselves a story about how it will all go back to normal. I think it’s very easy to have empathy for those people, for wanting that. You’ll feel it at various points in your life, too. But kiddo what I want to do is install a little voice on your shoulder. When big things change, and you’re tempted to believe it will all blow over, I just want a little voice to whisper to you: that’s not how it works. Because it isn’t. Life doesn’t have a natural default state that it automatically returns to. There is change and more change. I don’t want that voice to stress you out or panic you, I want it to move you out of the denial and into movement. Once you can see that things really have changed, and stop wishing that away, you can switch to acting on that information. That can help keep you and the people you care about safe. And it can help you be someone who changes things for the better.

Sorry – I know that’s a lot for a Saturday morning, but it’s important. In a few years I’ll give you some Octavia Butler to read, and she’ll add another 100,000 words on the subject.

I mean, in news that is more chill (you and Lily have avoided most of the brainrot slang that I wrote about in my last letter to you, but everything good in the world is currently chill), you are starting to be taller than very small adults. You may be part cat, but are also like a puppy, when your paws start to be oversized we know you’re getting ready to add another few inches. And your paws are growing again.

You have watched through most of the classic Simpsons canon, and you’re much more able to watch movies now. You had one of your first ever movies in a theatre — COVID lockdowns hitting when you were four really delayed that milestone, but you’re catching up. You went to a birthday party where they watched The Labyrinth and it blew your mind. We watched The Martian at home and during one of the tense parts you had us pause because you were worried about your blood pressure.

You just woke up and came downstairs. You’re excited because it’s February now, which means Goat Simulator will unlock the Valentine’s Day content. I’m gonna make some scrambled eggs for breakfast. And we’re set to have a pretty chill, lazy Saturday. Should go easy on your blood pressure.

Love you B,

Dad