My 6-year-old, myself

I ran my first marathon in my senior year of college, and when my parents came to campus for commencement, it was a frequent topic of conversation. I remember my mother hastening to tell my friends, "She didn't get it from us!"

At the time I felt vaguely offended by her eagerness to disassociate from me. But now that I'm a parent, I understand that instinct: Believe me, it seems to say to the people around you, I find my child as baffling as you do. 

My co-worker, with whom I share all my best Eli stories, has lately been insisting that Eli is more like me than I think. Last week, I told her that when Eli was home with the flu, at one point he called me in my office and, when I answered, just started chanting his own name over the phone. "It's Eli! Eli! Eli!"

She and I sat next to each other during a training session during which we practiced creating demo content for our website. I gave mine a headline: "Rachel rules." Then I created a card grid: "Here are the reasons Rachel is so awesome."

She looked over at my screen and raised her eyebrows. "Eli! Eli! Eli!" she mouthed.

I still maintain that Eli's personality is unique. But lately I've beginning to see that we're similar in ways that manifest differently.

This weekend, we went to a "silent disco party" for kids (they give you headphones to wear that you can tune to one of three different channels to hear music). There were a lot of kids in a small space and just a few party props, like emoji balls, which naturally led to a lot of play battles.

Eli made it his mission to collect both the emoji balls. After running himself ragged all over the room, he emerged raising both balls in triumph only to catch the eye of a small toddler gaping at him with an unmistakable desire for his prize. After a moment's hesitation, Eli passed one ball to the boy, only to have a bigger kid dart through them, grab the ball and take off.

The little boy burst into tears. Eli did a double take: from the crying boy to the one ball left in his hand and then back again. Then, as if in slow motion, he presented him with the ball. He walked heavily back over to me and sighed the deep sigh of a little kid who's just acted like a mature one.

"I didn't want the baby to be sad," he said.

It was a shining triumph of motherhood for me, and I almost welled up with pride: My baby was growing up to be kind and empathetic and generous, all the things I'd always wanted him to be.

But then, as I watched, Eli decided he had a new mission: Protect the baby and his ball. Justice for the baby! He threw his arms out to form a protective barrier around the baby. He dedicated himself to chasing down any kid in the room who wasn't sharing appropriately and got in their faces, explaining at top volume how they should be playing.

We both would have felt sad for the baby. We both would have handed over our balls to the baby. We might have both even done a little yelling over the issue. But only Eli would have turned it into a conflict and a personal crusade.

"You have a strong sense of justice," I told him. "You want everyone to do what you think is right. But sometimes you don't get to be the one that decides how everyone else behaves."

Yesterday morning, Eli asked if we could take him to get a haircut because he had one longer tuft of hair in the front that was bothering him (and he's recently become obsessed with "styling" his hair so it looks "handsome"). I said I could trim that hair for him. Then I went to get to the garbage and when I returned, Eli had vanished and the hallway was silent.

Because Eli was in the bathroom, on a stool, looking in the mirror and trimming his own hair with scissors.

(Side note: When I said, "WE DO NOT CUT OUR OWN HAIR!" he replied, "Well, now I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and tell past Eli that," which, in retrospect, is pretty funny.)

"You're like me," I told him after I finished my lecture. "When you have a problem, you want to fix it right away. You don't want to wait. And you want to do it yourself."

It's like there's some of me in there, but supersized: what I would act like if I were 6 years old and brimming with life. (Alternatively, what I might act like if I were 6 years old and gave no fucks.)

It's comforting to recognize these reflections of my own personality in Eli, because it gives me hope that some of the values I try to instill in him might be making a subconscious impression after all.

Every day, when I drop Eli off at school, I say hopefully, "Have a great day! Be kind to your friends and make good choices!" while he rockets off toward the door. Last week, when I dropped him off, he motioned for me to bend down, gave me a kiss on the cheek and beamed up at me.

"I'll be nice and kind and I'll make good choices," he said.

May that go for both of us in the new year.

Thank you for your service

People are usually surprised when they find out my husband Phil is a veteran. (A sergeant of the 4th infantry division, 4th brigade, to be exact.) I'm not sure if this is because Jewish boys from Queens don't generally join the military or if Phil and his hipster glasses and talent for building elaborate Magnatile structures don't give off a military-man vibe, or both.

People are even more surprised when they find out that Phil deployed to Iraq in 2003 as one of the first waves of American troops. On our second date, Phil charmed me by talking about the essential inflatable pillow he had packed for his tent. If you want to see Phil get animated about his service, ask him about (1) what it's like to shower in the Iraqi desert, (2) the time his fellow soldier wouldn't share her bread machine or (3) how conditions for deployed soldiers evolved since the early days (Phil thinks they got more "plush" because he and his guys were the ones who actually dug the holes).

I have a vivid memory of being in my sophomore dorm room at Brandeis in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. At our wedding, we played a slideshow of photographs from our childhoods that included the phrase "Phil went to Iraq...Rachel went to Brandeis."

I didn't know Phil while he was in the Army. In fact, Phil likes to say that he could have seen himself in a military career for life but that the reason he left the service was that he didn't think he'd be able to meet a nice Jewish girl.

Phil and I have been together for almost 12 years, which means I have spent almost 12 years trying to understand his motivation for joining the Army at age 18. I've landed somewhere between "he has a strong moral compass, unwavering commitment to duty and high tolerance for pain" and "he played with G.I. Joes a lot as a kid."

Every year on Veterans Day, Phil and his Army buddies go around changing their Facebook profile pictures to pictures of them in the service.

They also get told, "Thank you for your service," which is a phrase Phil has never liked. I asked him why and he said he finds it "patronizing."

"You can thank me for my service by giving veterans decent health care and support services," he said. "Go to a VA hospital and spend some time in the waiting room and then thank me for my service."

I wouldn't ordinarily say military guys are my "type," but that attitude is a total turn-on.

So if you want to thank Phil for his service this Veterans Day, consider making a donation to Team RWB or Hope for the Warriors.

Thanks for your service, Phil. Eli and I are proud of you.

(And if anyone has any connections to get Phil recognized by the Mets as the Welcome Back Veteran of the Game, which I have been trying to figure out how to do for years, please be in touch.)

Baruch dayan ha'emet

When Eli was small, every night at bedtime I'd sing him the Hashkiveinu prayer. Hashkiveinu is like a Jewish "Now I lay me down to sleep": Cause us to lie down in peace and raise us up to life renewed; spread the shelter of Your peace over us; guide us with Your counsel and save us for the sake of Your Name. Shield us from foe, plague, sword, famine and anguish. Remove wrongdoing from before us and behind us, and shelter us in the shadow of Your wings. For it is You, O God, Who protects and rescues us; it is You, O God, Who are our gracious and compassionate King. Safeguard our coming and our going, to life and to peace from now to eternity. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who spreads a shelter of peace over us.

There are lots of English translations of Hashkiveinu — the one we often sing at our temple goes, "Spread the shelter of Your peace over us; guide us in wisdom, compassion and trust; save us for the sake of Your name; shield us from hatred, sorrow and pain" — but the one I sang to Eli went, "O guide my steps and help me find my way; I need Your shelter now; rock me in Your arms and guide my steps, and help me make each day a song of praise to You."

(This is my temple's cantor!)

I thought of the Hashkiveinu when I heard about the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and it went round and round in my head all day: Shield us from hatred, sorrow and pain.

I believe in telling the truth to my child. We've had hard conversations about racism, about Trump, about death. But when he heard me telling Phil that there would be a special service at the beginning of Hebrew school today for adults and older students only, I couldn't bring myself to tell him why. I didn't want him to know.

I thought: It's only a matter of time before someone I know dies in a mass shooting.

On the first Friday of every month we go to a family Shabbat service at our temple. Eli gets really snuggly at these services, and he often sits in my lap and wraps my arms around him like a blanket. I kiss him on the head while we listen to the children's choir, and I get teary-eyed when they sing:

Let there be love
And understanding among us
Let peace and friendship be our shelter from life's storms. 

I wish we didn't have to live this way. I wish we didn't have to die this way. 

Unicorns are for everyone (or, "My kid likes pink but he also likes the patriarchy," or "Women: we've been here the whole time")

On the way home from the doctor after the great nurse neglect of 2018, Eli turned to me and said conversationally, “Do you know what it’s called when a boy likes girl things? A sissy!”

I think I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk.

“No!” I practically shouted. “Where did you hear that? No!”

It turned out Eli was giving me his very bad takeaway from the very good book “Oliver Button is a Sissy,” written in 1979 (!) by Tomie dePaola (who, Google taught me today, is gay), which his teacher had read to his class.

The gist: Oliver Button likes to tap dance; bullies graffiti the school wall to read “Oliver Button is a sissy”; Oliver Button tap dances with exuberance in the school talent show; bullies revise their graffiti to read “Oliver Button is a star!”

When Eli told me this last part — “Oliver Button is a STAR!” — his eyes shone. Eli likes to dance, too  — exuberantly and in public, and recently he tried to insert himself as a contestant in a dance battle at the Maker Faire and accused Phil of "crushing his dream" when Phil dragged him out of the competition.

Eli likes dancing, and sparkly colors, and nail polish, and rainbow face paint, and unicorns. This doesn’t make him a hero; frankly, I don’t think it even makes him any more enlightened than any other child.

It just means he likes cool shit!

But because we can’t have nice things, he’s been teased for some of this cool shit. Last year I wrote about buying him a pair of sparkly pink sneakers; in reality, he only wore them a few times. After our talk about “Oliver Button is a Sissy,” Eli told me, “Some kids at school make fun of me because I like My Little Pony, so I just don’t bring it up anymore.”

Because the truth is, Eli likes My Little Pony, but he also likes Pokemon, and if My Little Pony is going to get him teased and Pokemon isn’t, he’ll just stick with Pokemon. He’s not that brave. He’s not Oliver Button.

Can I be honest? Every time Eli tells me someone has teased him, it’s a girl who’s done the teasing. As someone who was once a girl myself, I have this pet theory as to why: It's because boys and men already have all the power, so girls who like "boy" things aren't much of a threat. If a girl wants to play football, eh, go ahead, we'll crush her. But girls are like: You guys get everyfuckingthing else, just let us have our fucking dolls and leave us alone. You have the presidency and both houses of Congress and now you want a pink shirt too?

On Monday Eli wore this H&M unicorn shirt to school.

Evidently some girl laughed at him and told him it was a girls' shirt. Eli says he told her that unicorns are "for everyone," because hello, everyone knows that unicorns possess superpowers and we also recommend the song "All Eight Unicorns" from the Story Pirates podcast.

"Girls can like boy things, but boys can't like girl things," he said sadly when he came home.

But paradoxically, even though what we do need is for some enlightened men to pave the way, I find something frustrating about the way enlightened men are discovering that this is an issue. Witness this Scary Mommy take on a Twitter thread from a dad whose 5-year-old son was teased for having a manicure: "Parents Are Applauding This Dad's Viral Thread on Toxic Masculinity." (Can you spot a familiar sparkly face? Ahem.)

Women have known for years about the problem of toxic masculinity. But suddenly a man — a straight white man — comes face to face with it and "parents are applauding." Just what we need: another man unearths the problem of the patriarchy. (But: Isn't this actually just what we need? You see my conundrum.)

And after sensitively boosting his tearful son's spirits, he — hold your breath! — paints his own nails too.

What a guy! Applause!

I can't explain why this irks me. Maybe because I can't help thinking: Is this what we need men to do? Get manicures or wear pink shirts? Didn't metrosexuals already solve this for us in the early '00s?

A few years ago, Runner's World published a special report called "Running While Female" about the experience of female runners who have been harassed or assaulted by running. The article was precipitated by a male editor who was shocked — shocked! — to learn from his female colleagues that this was a thing. And not a rare thing, but like a frequent occurrence that I would venture to say 100% of female runners have experienced at least once.

Once again, it took a man to "expose" (no pun intended) something that has never, ever been a secret to women.

A few weeks ago, Mommy Shorts posted an entry called "How to Teach Kids About Consent." The way she phrased the question in her Facebook group was actually about how we are raising our boys, and I think the post ended up being centered around consent because the great majority of the comments were about consent. No means no. Respect girls' bodies.

But here's my take: It's 2018, and "no means no" is honestly the least we can do. "Consent" is critical, but there is so much more we need to teach our children. Of course, duh, you don't touch someone who doesn't want to be touched. Ever since the Kavanaugh hearings, I see a lot of men on Twitter congratulating themselves essentially for...just not being rapists. But there's still a long way to go from being a not-rapist to being a true ally.

Does getting a manicure fall somewhere into that gulf? Maybe. But I think the conversations we need to have with our sons and our daughters perhaps start with "Unicorns are for everyone" and progress to "Why does there have to be a boys' team and a girls' team when you're playing tag?" and end somewhere in the realm of "Speak up about daily microaggressions against girls and women and use your inherent power as a white male to change them."

Because here's the thing: Sure, my kid likes pink, but that doesn't mean he's ready to tackle the patriarchy. He's still a white boy in a world that was frankly designed for the bidding of white men. He still moves through the world as a white boy and reaps the rewards that go along with that. When we're out in public and he interrupts an adult who's explaining something, he gets forgiven because he's cute and enthusiastic. When he's older and he gets rowdy at the playground, no one will call the police.

He thinks in general daddies do all the cooking ("But Mommy, you don't know how to work the stove!" he once said, aghast, when I promised I'd make him some eggs in Phil's absence) and mommies do all the driving, so score for our family on that point. (We're reading the first Boxcar Children book, which was published in 1924, and it makes me absolutely crazy how the girls do all the housekeeping.)

But I know in my bones that despite the way he rocks a pink unicorn shirt, he still thinks boys are stronger than girls, that boys are more powerful, because that's still what he sees in the world around him: powerful men wielding their power. Some of them are wielding it to deny women control over their own bodies and voices, and some of them are using it to show off their manicures on Twitter.

Remember when Jason Chaffetz said he couldn't support Trump and look his daughters in the eye? (And then he supported Trump anyway?) I guess in some way I see that and the Twitter manicure thread as two sides of the same terrible coin: men who have come to enlightenment because of their children, because some wrong has been perpetrated against them, or because they're surprised they think differently about the world now that their children are in it.

There seems to be a whole world of enlightened men (and sure, women too) whose thinking goes something like: "Now that I have a daughter, I have to start thinking about how to raise a strong feminist." Or "Now that I have a son, who in the grand tradition of men everywhere feels entitled to enjoy whatever he wants because the world is his oyster, I recognize how small-minded it is to distinguish hobbies on the basis of sex, although when I was a child I wouldn't have been caught dead with a manicure."

What I'd really like to see is for a man to say not "My children taught me that women deserve better," but "My mother taught me" or "My kickass colleague taught me" or even "Dana Scully taught me." Women: We've been here the whole time.

I love you all the time

"I'm going to punch you!"

The first time my 3-year-old says these words to me, I silently lift him up, carry him into his room and deposit him on his bed, ordering him to sit there for three minutes — a classic time-out.

When the three-minute timer beeps, my boy emerges wet-eyed and tear-streaked, wounded. He has said the worst thing he could think of, and in return his worst fears have been realized: He's been exiled, banished. For a child as sociable as he is, as craving of interaction, it must surely have been torture for him, those three minutes. He's solemn as he declares he will never, ever say that again.

Never is a long time for a 3-year-old. Too long, because the next day I hear it again: those ugly words, flung like a dare. Punish me. Make me cry. In response I promptly burst into tears of my own — not fake, I'm-trying-to-get-you-to-empathize tears but real, frustrated, raw tears, the tears of a woman who doesn't understand where her sweet boy has gone.

"Mommy? Why are you crying?" he asks tentatively.

"Because you keep saying you want to punch me and it makes me so sad!" I say. His lip quivers and soon he is crying too as if he's the wronged party, as if he's the one who's been betrayed.

"Now I'm sad like you!" he cries. "We're both sad!"

We're both sad. I think of all those times he cried as a baby and my job as a mother was just to make him happy again: dry, warm, fed, loved. How much simpler it was — happy, or sad? — before I had to worry about guilt, shame, fear.

Later that day, knowing I've handled it poorly, I turn to the Internet for advice. I can't be the first mom whose son has said he wants to hurt her. The Internet has answers for me, as it always does, about how I should have reacted, the mom I should have been in that moment; the mom who's composed, who doesn't want to say hurtful things back, who can love her child unconditionally even when he's angry.

When he was younger, when there was just happy, or sad, I'd sing a song to comfort him when he was upset about going to daycare. I love you all the time, I'd sing, to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell." I love you all the time, I love you all the time, even when I'm not with you I love you all the time.

The next time he explodes with anger I am ready for it with deep breaths to drown out the blood pounding in my ears. I move myself out of kicking range. "I love you," I say loudly over his tantrum. "I love you all the time."

It feels hokey. It feels insufficient. It feels unjust — how can I let him say these things to me? But I force myself to look at him — my boy, his chest heaving, his feelings too big for his body. I tell myself, It's not about you.

That night, we are coiled into his small bed together, our foreheads touching. He asks me to stay. I stroke his forehead, the way I did when he was a small baby going to sleep.

"I love you all the time," I tell him. "I love you even when you're sad, I love you even when you're mad. I love you all the time."

He shuts his eyes, tightly. He nods along.

"I love you all the time," I say. "I love you even when you're grumpy, I love you even when you're silly, I love you all the time."

His eyes slide open and he smiles — the smile I remember, the smile I adore.

"You love me," he whispers, his breath filling the space between us. "Even — " He pauses. "Say the words all again."

And I do.

Human credentials

Last week I walked down the hall from my office to celebrate a co-worker's retirement. I ate half a piece of cake with some kind of tasty cannoli filling and then decided I would save the other half for after I finished my lunch salad.

But when I got back to my office, I had a missed call from the most dreaded contact I have saved in my phone: "PS 196 Nurse."

The call was one hour old. Nurse Annette had also called my office phone and then resorted to sending me an email. I was officially The Worst Working Mother of All Time.

When I finally got to school to pick up Eli, he deployed that time-honored weapon of our people: guilt. "Why didn't you answer your phone?" he asked in a small, sad voice. "I cried in the nurse's office."

The way that I can tell that Eli is genuinely not feeling well is that he's always really sweet to me when he's sick. "Thank you for coming to get me," he continued as we left school with a citation from the nurse that read CHILD MAY NOT RETURN TO SCHOOL UNTIL FEVER-FREE FOR 24 HOURS in prominent highlighted capital letters. He slipped his hand into mine.

"I care about you so much," he said. "I would do anything for you."

So much of parenting is about sacrifice, about the sleep and sanity you give up for your children's sake. Lately I've been thinking a lot about the things we give up for the people we love. (My pre-parenting-sized clothes, exhibit A.) Should I cope with a lengthier commute so Eli can live in a house with a yard? How much of my hard-earned paycheck is appropriate to part with for summer camp? And so many of the best parenting stories are about those sacrifices, about parents who gave up time and opportunities and endured hardships so their children could be successful at their dreams.

There are so many times as a parent that I think I haven't sacrificed enough, that I haven't given up enough for Eli to have the kind of childhood I dream about for him. But when we have incidents like the Great Nurse's Office Neglect of 2018, I'm reminded that so much of parenting is also inherently selfish: I created this child, and now his soul is designed to love me and forgive me even when I let him down.

I think I live a small life: I go to work, I ride the subway back and forth, I go to the gym or out for a run, I listen to podcasts, I go to book club, I watch Bravo, I sometimes walk to the dog (but mostly Phil walks the dog, and I'm always promising I'll commit to walking the dog more often; you get the idea).

But when something awful happens in the world, I find myself tiptoeing in to Eli's room at night to watch him sleep, and I think, You. You are the best thing I've ever done. 

I mean, who wouldn't feel pretty good about themselves for creating this face?

What could be more selfish than that?

Every so often I think about something David Duchovny said about playing Fox Mulder on "The X-Files" (you didn't know I was going to bring "The X-Files" into this thoughtful parenting blog, did you?): that Scully was Mulder's "human credential," the tangible evidence of his humanity in the world.

Sometimes I think of Eli as my own human credential. He is bolder and more audacious than I have ever been; he's my id, unleashed. He's — to borrow an expression from my other great pop culture obsession — some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me, my great unfinished symphony.

Because if being a parent makes you think about all the things you give up, it also makes you think about everything you'll leave behind. This morning on the subway, I read about the UN's dire new climate change report that says the planet is facing catastrophe by 2040. Eli won't even be 30 years old. Part of the selfishness of becoming a parent is the promise of immortality (another deep thought from "The X-Files" goes "Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it" — see also "Coco," 2017), but increasingly I find myself in despair over the kind of world we might be leaving for our children and grandchildren.

In "The Shawshank Redemption" (you didn't know I was going to bring "The Shawshank Redemption into this thoughtful parenting blog, did you?), Red teaches us that geology is the study of pressure and time. Something tells me that the same is true for parenting: pressure, and time.

I think we all have dreams that we make sacrifices so we can create a better world for our children, but we also dream that our children might be the ones who save us: Last week I watched too many hours of the Kavanaugh hearing, and after Eli demanded an iPad and milk with his breakfast I ended up lecturing him about his sense of white male entitlement. Because what I really meant wasn't just "It's rude when you don't show courtesy"; it was: Please grow up to be a Barack Obama, not a Brett Kavanaugh. Be as kind and sweet as you are when I screw up. Be someone's human credential.

Now we are six

Dear Eli,

Six!

I have a confession: This is the very first year of your life where your birthday has seemed like a natural and inevitable scenario rather than an astonishing and unbelievable occurrence, the way it seemed when you turned One! Two! Three! Four! Five! This year I'm cool and casual about your swift and inexorable progression toward old age, just the mom of a 1st-grader, NBD.

You have so much to be proud of. Despite your misgivings about kindergarten ("Are we going to have time to play or is it just going to be all reading and writing and BORING STUFF?" you asked suspiciously at the end of pre-K), you rocked it. Your teacher tells us you have a "math brain" (which we all know you get from me! This is a lie. Thanks Daddy), but from my perspective the coolest thing you learned in kindergarten was how to read. Eli, I like to think I keep a pretty cool head about your accomplishments, but every time I see you reading my inner Jewish mother takes over and I just want to start bragging at the top of my voice to everyone in the vicinity: "This is my son WHO CAN READ! Here he is READING! Would you perhaps like to know more about Batman's role in stopping the crime wave? Because he can READ IT TO YOU!"

Speaking of uncool heads, you also learned how to ride a bike this year. Eli, if you ever want to see something amazing, get yourself a baby who can't even hold its own wobbly head up and then keep it alive for five or so years and then watch it balance precariously atop a narrow saddle and pedal away from you. (I know that seems pretty labor-intensive when you could just, like, visit Niagara Falls, which I hear is also amazing, but I'm pretty sure parenting a bike rider is equally satisfying.)

As your mother, I know I'm supposed to think the world of you, but the truth is that I don't always assume the best about you, and for that I'm sorry. Twice this summer, your camp counselor called, and both times when the phone rang I immediately thought "WHAT DID HE DO?" and both times she was actually calling to tell me that you were the victim and not the aggressor.

In fact, your camp counselors have been writing such over-the-top effusive praise of you that if you had better handwriting, I'd be suspicious. They say you are a "fun, energetic and loving camper," "a genuine good kid," "such a sweetheart," "always the loudest and most excited volunteer" and — this is where it gets really unbelievable — "such a good listener and extremely well behaved" (are you sure you're not paying them off in Pokemon cards?).

You continue to have what can be charitably called a "strong personality," to which you add an independent streak and some very definite ideas. But you also continue to have the softest cheeks I've ever felt and give the sweetest, gentlest kisses. Sometimes it seems fair to say that our relationship consists mostly of shouting and snuggling — sometimes the ratio is 90% shouting, 10% snuggling, but other days we can bring it closer to a 50/50 balance.

Recently at night you've been listening to the audiobook of "Fantastic Mr. Fox," by Roald Dahl — you know it so well that when we were on vacation you'd recite it out loud yourself, and a few weeks ago we had a Fantastic Mr. Fox party, where we drank apple cider and ate chicken and pretended to be the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, out to get the fox.

Eli, the most fabulous thing about being your mama is getting to watch you take on the world with such gusto, like it's a big juicy peach that you're taking a bite out of. Last weekend we went to a "silent disco" party at the Unisphere, where they gave us wireless headphones that could be switched to three different channels of music played by live DJs. I was watching you dance your heart out and realized I'd never seen you so enthused about, say, trying out a new sport for the first time. Maybe sports are not Eli's thing, I thought. Maybe dancing is his thing!

Because I do want you to find your "thing" that you're passionate about (besides video games), and what's most exciting about being 6 is the possibilities that are available to you. This year I'm signing you up for origami and dance in afterschool; you might try fencing; you've been asking all summer when we'll go back to the pool we usually swim in every Sunday after Hebrew school.

You love to laugh and be read to; you love soft blankets and sequin flip shirts; you love video games and candy.

Life is a door that you're just flinging open. I can't wait to walk through it with you.

Happy birthday, my sweetest pea.

Love,
Mama