SUMMER 2019
At the end of the summer, we went to Cape Cod with three other families. We had a wonderful time but it was also a lot, with six boys and just one girl (your sister). We tend to vacation with families who only have boys and that hasn’t always been fair to your sister. After this trip, we vowed to never put her through that again.
4th GRADE
School began shortly after Labor Day and you (along with your best friend Max) were put into your first ICT class at 261 on recommendation of your 3rd grade teacher. Not because you have an IEP, but because she felt your temperament could help level the playing field in an ICT class. She also felt that in a class “that has so much going on” it was good for you guys to have each other. Your 4th grade teachers names were Stacy and Nadya, and after just a few months, I could safely say they felt differently. Their nicknames for you and Max were Tango & Cash.
HALLOWEEN
You and Max dressed up as a couple of killer clowns and you guys got loads of attention and compliments all night long. One of your favorite days of the year was a total success!
ELLA
When putting a beloved pet to sleep it is not always so transparent, and that was surely the case for Ella. There’s no denying she went downhill during her last year with us, and yet there was never that perfect sign that it was time. We finally decided to say good-bye the last week of October and made the appointment for Friday, November 1st. We didn’t want to drag it out for her any longer, but we also wanted you to have a normal Halloween. And if we could help it, we also wanted you to not miss school.
Putting Ella down was downright sad. The vet gave her a sedative that we were told would make her super sleepy moments later. Immediately after the injection, Ella took off down our hallway for our bedroom where she plopped down on her bed. As promised, she fell fast asleep. The four of us, the vet and her assistant were huddled over Ella as the drug that would put her to sleep forever, was administered. I’ll never forget how much we cried and how in awe I was of you, for being a part of it, for allowing us the gift of saying good-bye this way, at home. Because it’s a lot. It’s a lot for an adult, so I could only imagine how it must have been for you. Your first friend. Your first word, “EH-WAH.”
That night we drove with Ella’s body out to Sidi and Ganga’s house in Northport, where you, daddy and Sidi dug a big hole in the backyard, and we laid her to rest wrapped in a blanket. It was cold out yet the air was heavy with grief. There was something so primal about the experience and I’ll never forget just how willing and helpful you were.
A couple of weeks later we would have a gathering at home for Ella with our closest friends and neighbors. You asked me about the appropriateness of going off to play video games after you greeted our guests and hung out with us for a while. It was just one of many moments that made me admire your maturity and growth last year.
XMAS & NEW YEAR’S
We hosted our annual Christmas Eve party and Santa, (aka Ashley our neighbor,) came over and handed out gifts to all the children. A couple of days after we went out to Northport to spend the Xmas break with your cousins who were in town from Singapore. You guys played and created and role played every single day. We saw movies and went out to dinners and made our annual trip to “the mall.” Being a city boy, you are slightly fascinated by malls!
MARCH
After the holidays there was buzz about a virus that popped up in China. We didn’t know much. And nothing much was really being said about it either. But by March it was in New York City and things got weird, fast. Socially distant, six feet apart and face masks would become our new normal. In the middle of March schools shut down overnight and our lives changed forever.
COVID
An entire blog post can be written about the early days, weeks and months of the Corona virus pandemic and the lockdown that ensued, but I will do my best to sum up what it was like for us here. It was strange and hard, especially the homeschooling part. Pretty early on, one of my closest childhood friends lost her father to the virus. Soccer and all other extra curricular activities went from being performed outside in groups to being performed solo on an iPad in tiny NYC apartments.
You would finish homeschool each day and take up playing Fortnite in our living room. At first it was fine. We allowed it because it was literally the only way you could interact with your friends. But it eventually became problematic. Fortnite’s addictive nature has been likened to the addictive nature of some drugs and I can certainly see why. After playing it for a while, you would become defiant, angry and impossible to parent.
Then in June there was the death of George Floyd and all the protests, vandalism, curfews and racial tensions that followed. It was some dark times; for us, for the country and just for human kind in general.
But there were lots of beautiful moments, too. We shared dozens of lunches and dinners on our deck as spring began to unfold. When it is cold on the street it is perfectly warm on our deck, thanks to direct, southern sunlight. We watched so many movies including all the DC and Marvel ones, and many TV shows such as “Anne with an E” and “Raven’s Home.” We drove places that normally would take 1-2 hours to get to, in just half the time because no one was on the road. We learned how to Zoom and we FaceTimed frequently with the GP’s.
You discovered our fire escape and would hang out on it with your sister to take in the protests and all the happenings on the streets. We did the 7pm cheer almost every single night to celebrate and give thanks to all the essential workers. We had our building to ourselves and would hang out on our neighbor’s roof where we watched the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds roar through the sky at lightning-fast speeds and afterwards, you decided you’d grow up to fly fighter jets. Most notably, during the pandemic, we adopted a new dog… Stormy.
STORMY
We had been fostering dogs pretty consistently since the new year. There was May, Lyla, Roxie and then Stormy. All got great homes and the last one, Stormy, got ours. She came to us from the Manhattan shelter of NYCACC after I saw a volunteer post her photo. As her story goes, her person, a young man who fell on hard times, could no longer care for her and relinquished her to the shelter. After filling out the necessary paperwork, he went to see her in her cage and spoke softly to her as she whimpered and cried back. According to the volunteer, it was heartbreaking. I told Michele (my rescue partner) to pull her and bring her to Brooklyn.
Stormy came to us on March 29th, when we were in the throes of the pandemic. She arrived tired, scared and with open sores all over her body. She had allergies and suffered from dermatitis and a double ear infection. Stormy slept like a log that first day. We played around with different names, but in the end, we decided to keep the one thing Stormy could have from her past. Her name.
SUMMER 2020
On June 26th school ended and we celebrated with a day at the ocean with friends. Immediately after we kicked off a summer that was so drastically different than any other, dividing almost all our time between the beaches in Northport and the lake in Connecticut with grandparents. We laid out one rule: you could not bring your Nintendo Switch. We didn’t want to subject the GP’s to how you get when playing Fortnite. And because you won’t play the game on anything but your Switch, an unintentional but much-needed withdrawal and detox from Fortnite began. (More on this in next year’s post.)
BIRTHDAY
We spent a total of 3 1/2 weeks in Brooklyn over the summer — one of those days was your birthday. We made it a point for you to wake up on your 10th birthday in your bed, in your room. We spent Sunday, August 9th at the ocean with your closest friends and their families. As the day was coming to an end, I had a brief moment with you in which I was pulling your long, sea-drenched curly hair back into a bun and you said, “thank you mommy, today has been epic. I forgot how everything is about you on your birthday and it’s awesome!!”
You’re awesome, Mylo, my buddinsk. Happiest of birthdays to you!
