To my younger son,

You’re five. How has it been five years since that chaotic day you came into our lives, three weeks early and only a few hours after I had a job interview? (Yes, really.) How could it have been so many months since they placed you – so very tiny – in my arms after so much anxiety and bated breath? When I wondered how your brother would react, how you would fit in our family, who you would be?

Last year at this time, we had just canceled your birthday party. It was inevitable – the school had closed, we had started isolating as a precaution. Of course, we had no idea how long it would all be. We were in “okay, this is bad but we’ll make the best of it mode.” Little did we know that we’d be celebrating your next birthday with COVID still dominating so much of our lives. That we’d wait months and then a whole year before seeing one set of your grandparents and when we did, it would be outside and in masks.

This year has been strange and isolating and yet I am so glad to have been able to spend so much more time with you. Almost three more hours a day. (Admittedly, sometimes a very long three more hours a day.) I have felt closer to you than I have in the time right after you were born, except now I’m not in the haze of sleep deprivation. I’m in the haze of pandemic-weirdness, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish. I’ve been able to spend breakfasts, lunches, and snack with you every day. To see you play freely, chatter away, share your strange little-kid obsessions and wonders.

That’s allowed me to see your personality emerge so clearly. Your quirky love of 20 questions, of D&D monsters, of endless games, of elaborate pretending. Your deep love for your brother and of our family.

You draw me – and everyone else – in with your call of “Follow me!” or “Can you play with me?” Your blue eyes are always far more convincing than I want to be convinced.

Four and five years old is the time of fairy tales, of imagination, of fantastical things. So much has happened this year that is dark and awful. And yet, we have together found magic in the dark. I hope that of this past year – of this time of being four to five – that all of the things that you carry with you, it’s this lesson. That together, there are ways to find magic and beauty, even in the worst times. And that you are loved – always loved.