Dear Matteo, 60 Months Old

Happy 5th birthday, Matteo! I have been waiting for this birthday for many months because I am convinced you were 4 years old for far too long. Seriously, it felt like two years. You developed so much in height, strength, articulation, and ideas you outgrew your age by months. Age 5 looks better on you. Fit matters.

This birthday you’ve enjoyed a flood of gifts, mostly in the Monster Jam and dinosaur categories. I chose to go religious-sentimental-nostalgic, gifting you a gold-plated chain and cross that came in a special Amazon-vendor provided small box with solicitation for a 5-star review.

The reason I got you this chain is because I proudly wore my own up through about 2nd or 3rd grade. The story of my chain was that it included a medallion from Italy that my Nonna procured. Or so I was told. That medallion could have come from Italy or could have been made in a penny presser at the Woodland Park Zoo, but regardless it had a face of Jesus and I thought it was incredible. The chain broke many times over the short years and was replaced by several chains Aunt Nina didn’t know she had. The only reason I stopped wearing the medallion was because it finally became lost on the school playground.

I wasn’t sure if you’d like the gift and failed to convince your Mom that I needed my own chain to encourage you to wear yours. She allows you a wider aperture of style than I get to enjoy. That didn’t matter because you took right to it and immediately identified the cross as a small sword or gold lightsaber, which is about right because we spend more Sundays at ski resorts, pools or trails than we do churches.

Coincidentally, you and Eliza just finished a first week of “vacation bible school,” which I learned is church-subsidized summertime daycare. It’s another reason to love the church. Upon seeing the cross, Eliza unexpectedly announced, “Jesus died for our sins on the cross and came back to life after three days.” That superb recall solicted curious conversation about why the cross was made of wood and not gold, how Jesus came back to life and if Santa helped with the miracle. These are legitimate questions that I gracefully navigated by confirming the cross materials and how Santa and Jesus are co-conspirators who make a big deal out of Jesus’s birthday. Existential crisis solved.

I’m not sure how long this cross and chain will last. Maybe you’ll decide not to wear it, or maybe you’ll lose it to some playground like I did. Maybe it will never be a religious token to you but it will be cultural to me. You’re an Italian-American boy and, like teething on pizza crust, playing soccer, and being devilshly charming, wearing a chain is just part of the program. Buon compleanno, bello!

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 80 Months Old

Dear Eliza, 

I wrote this letter to you a couple of week back feeling sad, angry, and helpless. I had to get my thoughts down in the moment as a way to process it for myself. Here we go.

___

This is the second consecutive week of a mass shooting. There are more mass shootings than days on the calendar. 

This news hits close to home. Not physically close as the incident occurred in Uvalde, Texas, but close because it happened at an elementary school. You and Matteo were home from school today with a bad head cold, and I couldn’t have been more grateful to have you at home, in my sight.

I know you practice drills at school for these unspeakable events, and I know you can’t easily comprehend why. I suppose I can relate to earthquake drills in my time. The difference is that earthquakes are rare, not a daily occurrence, and they’re an act of God, not man. 

It’s hard to comprehend the idea that school isn’t a safe place to be. Growing up as a white boy in the Pacific Northwest and attending a private elementary school sheltered me from a lot of the world and provided real physical safety. I traded some perceived safety for an expanded worldview, thankfully attending a public Tacoma high school. Although I got some personal items stolen, that experience was still reasonably safe. 

This is a tough time to be a parent on so many fronts. Pandemic and vaccines. Online bullying. Gun violence. It’s hard enough being a parent without these factors. We waited so long in an IVF journey to bring you into the world, and questioned if you would ever come. The fact that parents are losing their children so soon because of racism, prejudice and ineffective policies is shattering. 

I spoke with a colleague and mom of teenagers about parenting. She wisely said that you never stop worrying about your kids. You just worry about different things as they grow. The labor shifts from being physical - chasing after young kids for their well-being and safety - to emotional - worrying about what they do on their own, out of sight.

The labor of this parenting generation includes a new layer of worry about what total strangers may be capable of doing while your kids are out of sight, or just at school.

Like with environmental protection, gun violence is the responsibility of my generation to inherit and make positive changes. I hope we do our job for you.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 59 Months Old

Guess what? You graduated from pre-K.

You say “guess what” constantly to get attention and start communicating about whatever is your mind. As it turns out, you’re also a budding poet. Here’s your poem that your teacher read at your “Moving on” ceremony:

I am an Italian boy.
I love watching shows.
I wonder about my kitty.
I need lots and lots of food!
I dream of Monster Jam!
I feel like sometimes I am mad, or sad, or happy.
I hope my kitty grows up.
When I grow up I want to be a Monster Jam driver.
I am an Italian boy.

You are clear and consistent in that literary self portrait.

Some of the biggest joys of parenting come in cliches, like graduations. It’s unavoidable to feel emotion about the conclusion of something and the start of something. The pride is expected and uncontrollable.

Next school year, you’ll be in full day kindergarten, taking the bus to school with your sister five days a week. For your Mom and me, this is the last of a routine hanging out just with you. It was a great run, and I’ll miss you running into my office during one of my video meetings to ask where Luna is hiding. Clothing always optional.

Congratulations on your graduation my Italian boy!

Love, Dad

Dear Eliza, 79 Months Old

A few weeks ago I got an alert from the school district. I should let you know that school communications have advanced tremendously and now we get a combination of email and text messages, as we prefer, about any number of events, most unimportant and some slightly embarrassing, like an unexcused absense because we didn’t want to end a long weekend away. I’m sure these communications sound archaic by the time you read this.

In any case, this specific alert was of real concern. Someone on your bus #33 used mace or bear spray sometime on the morning ride into school, and affected kids were going to be checked by the school nurse. I was working at home, as usual, when I saw the email come in and ran upstairs to tell your Mom. She had already seen the notification by then, ever prepared for these events that otherwise never happen.

The emergency made us… laugh. We knew you weren’t hurt and hoped you weren’t uncomfortable. In our relatively sleepy neighborhood, this was a significant event that amounted to a little kid probably taking a spray out of a garage and showing it off on the bus. When you came home, you confirmed as much.

We asked you about how you felt and you said that you were OK but everyone started sneezing at the same time. That must have been a sight (and super spreader event). Later, you drew a side-profile image of the inside of the bus and everyone sneezing, like you said, in a domino effect. I believe that scents can create the most vivid memories, like a bad cologne can take you back to a junior high dance. If you ever smell bear spray again, I bet you’ll be transported right back to that bus #33.

In other news, your Mom and I took a childless vacation to Austin, Texas, for the first time in years and left you and Matteo to stay between Grandma Vicki’s house and with our neighbors Lindsey and John. I think we cared so much about the childcare coverage and school hand-off logistics that we didn’t realize we set you both up for a first sleepover with your neighbor friends Aliyah and Austin. As expected, you both did really well, save Matteo almost getting hit by a car at the bus drop off. We were so excited to see you upon return and it only took about half a day before you begged us to watch Glitter Force and protested that Matteo got to watch more shows than you.

All things settle back to normal quickly, be it sibling rivalry or bear sprayed busses.

Love, Dad

Dear Matteo, 58 Months Old

About 10 years ago, I got into a “season” of mountaineering. I came off a job at Eddie Bauer, where I got to meet and work with some of the best mountaineers of this generation — Viesturs, Hahn, Arnot — as well as the Whittakers. I then took a marketing job at one of the guide services and that sent me from a curiousity to actually chasing sufferfests. I climbed Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier that summer.

I’ve wrapped another personal season to varying results. I first have to thank your Mom for allowing me the time because mountaineering doesn’t take hours but days — long travel and a lot of training. Your Uncle Scott catalyzed this season of climbing as he’s been interested in peak bagging the last year, and got a Rainier summit himself.

To start this season, I took on Mt. St. Helens, which your Mom and I have climbed in previous years in the early Fall. This was my first time with skis in the winter, and I stopped short about 500 feet from the summit because of leg cramping. Lesson learned: get my hydration and pre-climb diet right. Then I climbed Mt. Ellinor in the Olympics with a large group and, again with skis, to a successful summit.

Finally, I just wrapped a big trip to Mt. Baker, which I had never climbed, and we went guided by Mountain Madness because of the glacier travel. That was a haul at 20-miles roundtrip with heavy packs. I have not been that cold sleeping overnight under a two-story snowdrift. On our second day, we stopped short about 800 feet from the summit, about 7,500 total elevation, to ski down in a white out. I felt good in my body, mind and decision quality out on a big mountain. The skiing was also really great — when we could see.

Here’s the thing about the mountains, they humble you because you feel so small and exposed. I had a lot of quiet time to think, putting one foot in front of the other for hours and hours. I found myself thinking about you, Eliza and Mom a lot. I thought about the responsibility to always return home safely. I thought about the adventures we’ll get to take together when you kids can go further and climb higher. I like that wilderness experience but I’d like to do that more with family than away from family.

Everything is on a balance. This has been a fun round of climbing, and I’m looking forward to more lowland time at beaches and pools this summer. It’s been fun spending time with climbing buddies and sleeping in tents, but I missed hanging out with you and Eliza and even your disasterous sleep schedules in comfortable beds! I spent a lot of time on the snow, and I’m excited to get back in the heat. Your Mom and I are flying out to Austin, Texas for a COVID-delayed anniversary trip.

I look forward to the next mountaineering season, hopefully sooner than 10 years out and definitely with you, Mom and Eliza on the crew.

I try to stay on topic with these letters, but one aside: puzzles. You love puzzles and your Mom upped the ante this past month trying a 1,000-piece emoji puzzle (lots of yellow circles). It took us a week and a lot of parent-only evening sessions putting that together. We’re going to stay engaged with puzzles but are probably going to get back into the sub-500-piece puzzle to keep sanity and use our dining table again.

Love, Dad