Dear ECS: Back home

Dear ECS,

Well, it has been an eventful month+ honey.  We have been really enjoying the Spring here in DC, and also a slightly chiller spring up in Maine for a week - plus some great visits to Princeton and NYC. 

Heading up to Maine was wonderful, and for me the best part was seeing how excited you, mom and Rosy (and me) were to be back home in Maine.  When we left there to move to Takoma Park, we weren’t sure when we were coming back.  Which in a way gets to the crazy uncertainty we have had over the last year+.  Mom thought we would be coming back to Maine in six weeks, and here it is six months later.  

That time did nothing to diminish our collective excitement of getting to the island, of your amazing connections with friends up in Maine (us adults too) and the beauty of the state and our little slice of heaven.  I feel very grateful to see you so clearly at home in my own hometown, a dynamic I never imagined as possible when you were born six years ago.  Life is funny, it has so many twists and turns and wrinkles - a point made all the more obvious via our collective experience in the last years.

The Babas

Another joy since i last wrote has been your Babas (aka my parents) coming and visiting us in the DC area.  They are wonderful and your connection to your grandparents is deep and very special.  You guys played for hours, drew for hours, and generally tunneling into time together.  

One highlight was the Babas setting up raised beds for some gardening in our back yard.  It was a full circle moment for me, as my parents were HUGE gardeners when I was your age.  We had so many raised beds when I was a kid, and the Babas grew so much delicious food as back to landers in rural Maine in the early 80’s.  Through my entire childhood into adolescence, growing food was a big part of our household.  Perfect little cherry tomatoes, abundant greens, and snap peas that popped.  Just a small sampling of the very essence of food grown and eaten well.  Your delight, and my parents, at setting up our little garden was palpable and felt like a continuation of my own childhood in a way that was deeply satisfying. 

“We should do something about this problem”

The Babas visit flows into the last thing I wanted to write about honey.  Their last night in DC, we all did movie night and watched a documentary about coral reefs around the world.  Who doesn’t love watching mesmerizing fish and remembering life in the Bahamas?  Which is true, only this documentary was about coral bleaching around the world and climate change.  So kind of tough for a kindergartener to grasp, no matter how smart, given it is hard for this 41 year old to really, truly get my head around the problems.  

Made all the better when you said about 3/4 of the way through the movie - “We should do something about this problem.”  I could not agree more.  And I know you will do something about this problem, and so many other problems.  I am working on big problems, just like your mom.  But your sense about needing solutions and proactively working towards those solutions, working for a better world at such a young age mirrors the data about the generation between your parents and you, and is exactly the ethos we need.  

We are here to help with problems big and small, working towards solutions across generations. You are an inspiration and also the impetus for working towards a better world. 

love, 

dad