I love our morning walks and when he stops to teach me the laughing gulls names. There was a new one today so we picked out a name together. It’s “Donnie,” just so you know.

And did you know he has his first crush? He told me over breakfast that, when they're nearby, his stomach tries to escape through his chest, and he asked me what he should do. It reminded me of when we met — those first few months — and falling in love at our first Odesza. So I smiled and told him, “Find out their favorite game and ask them to watch you play!” He rolled his eyes because he’s sick of hearing our story, but I wonder what you’d say if he asked you.

He's so tender with the parts of me I used to hide. He's been practicing his laugh in the car “so it can sound just like yours,” he tells me. And I love the way he holds out more tissues than I could ever use when he makes me cry. It's those tears that help me see that there’s a crack in everything. That’s how his light gets in.

While everyone was over for dinner yesterday, he got really quiet and walked past everyone to tug on my sleeve. I was worried at first, but he asked if I could homeschool him and all his classmates from last year when summer ends. He wants me to teach them every year until they all graduate from college together. He loudly counted up the grades as he was explaining, but I had to stop him when he got to the twenties.

I asked him why. “They beg me to ask you all the time. Ever since school ended” and he gave me permission to skip math if that would make it easier for me. I couldn’t argue. “But now I want it, too" he continued. "I wish the house was this full all the time.”

He shows me every day that love and curiosity are two halves of something bigger that I don't have a word for yet. I cherish the way his eyes go wide flipping over rocks and seeing the worms underneath, and when he tells me his dreams about being a bird searching for a cloud that looks like you.

Last night before bed, I was making sure he brushed his teeth and do you remember how it took years to get him to stop spitting out his toothpaste? He called it “spicy ice cream” one time and then decided he wants to try every flavor.

And I wish someone told me having a daughter would be like meeting the two of us as one tiny human, but braver, stronger, and wiser. Someone who knocks on my door when I’m crying because I’m sad, and charges through it when I cry because I’ve been hurt.

I treasure the piles of scrapbooks from our adventures. A million branches and she loves every one. I mentioned needing something from the market the other day and she jumped up from editing a music video to beg me to bring her. I was hoping she would because I adore the way she finds magic in things I stopped looking at.

There was a stall selling jewelry for pennies and, when we passed by, she froze — enchanted by an aquamarine seahorse necklace no bigger than a fingernail. At a few thousand words per second she debated how each of her favorite characters would love or hate the necklace in different ways. She used to stop herself but she no longer does because she knows, now, how much I admire the depth of her explanations.

By the time we got home and parked, we were only halfway done. “It’ll be easier if I make a flow chart,” she said, and raced up to her room.

I worry about her, too. There's something in the way she trembles standing between her friends and a spider, and the way she cried all morning when the spring flowers died. It's like a poet and a warrior made a home in her heart but they’re still learning to share.

Over lunch, I finished making the shield from her XIV character, the one she’s been asking me for for months. When I gave it to her, she screamed and ran around the block with it so fast neither the dogs nor I could keep up. She suddenly stopped, turned around, pushed the shield into my chest and said, “If we only have one, I want you to have it. To keep you safe.”

I asked what would keep her safe and she furrowed one brow and said, “You, silly!” and did you know that pride and grief are the same thing?

She tore her favorite cargo shorts the other day climbing the tree where the woodpeckers live. She acted like she's fine but during dinner she barely ate Mom’s sinigang. So I happened to need her help afterward to clean out the attic, and when we found the sewing machine that I haven’t used since PAX, it must have had some magic left because she was awestruck. “Is this how you made Meteion?” she asked, and then demanded I teach her how to use it. So I did.

I sat with her and watched her sew and get so focused neither of us said a word and all you could hear was the whir of the machine while the sun sank into the ocean outside. When it felt right, I asked her what had been making her sad, and she didn’t say anything for a long time and then reached into her pocket and put a polaroid into my hand. I think you took this one. It’s me and her last year: I was holding her up to the sun, doing a Lion King bit. It had been torn apart, probably by the woodpeckers, but she had carefully taped it back up.

She said “You didn’t pick me up once this whole summer". She paused. “Did I grow up too much?” and she jumped into my arms and hugged me tight because we both knew I was going to cry. “I wish I could be a baby again,” she said, holding back her own tears. I told her that no matter how much she grows up she’ll always be my little baby, and she liked that better and fell asleep on my lap and we stayed like that for I don’t know how long.

No one told me having kids would feel like having a compass in my heart that always points home. That no matter how much we fight and yell and say things we don't mean, that no matter how much our family breaks, we'll find a way back to each other and become strong in the broken places.

No one told me any of this, but it's better, I think, because I got to learn it from them.

Anyway, remember to charge the car before we head out this year. If we get stuck outside Leavenworth without AC again, I told them to sing Gentleman in your ear until you promise to get us Cane’s.

💙,