Dear ECS: Milestones

Dear ECS, 

Well sweetie, you are now a seven year old.  You grows up and you grows up, to quote one of my favorite movies. With the timing of your indelible birth (in May), it is so nice to be wearing shorts and sunglasses, and to put the winter coats into a different closet.  

Your birthday, when you went to sleep as a six year old and woke up as a seven year old, is a great marker of growth and development and continuing to flower into a more complete and complex human.  Of course, this growth happens each and every day (yes, I am jealous).  And it is a continual wonder to me that this incremental growth is happening all the time and then I step back and think about where you were 6 months ago or a year ago, and you are in fact a different human, with different wants, desires and fears.  That applies to us adults too, but not quite in the same time scale.  At least that has been my experience.  

The entirety of your growth from being the tiny, fragile human you were in 2015 to today as an adventurous, whip smart, joyful human is stunning.  We don’t always step back and reflect on this immense personal evolution your life’s journey has been over the intervening seven years.  We are busy!  But, when I do that reflection, it is stunning. 

The journey we all go through from being utterly pliable and helpless to strong, opinionated, empathetic people is really remarkable.  Before Mu and I had you, I didn’t honestly think too much about the utterly vulnerable stages of my own life.  But seeing them again from a different perspective has a way of rekindling your sense of life and creates a sense of gratitude towards my own parents.  Thank you for that Elle. 

Of course your growth, and mine, and everyone’s, is a day to day reality - not measured in years.  Milestones are funny like that because we rightly use them to mark our journey but the journey is so much more than those markers.  Life, as a 42 year old dude, has less milestones than your sweet, tender and incisive seven year old wonderful reality.  But I was seven a long time ago and it is easy to forget that phase of my life with a lot of well earned milestones. 

Keep on keeping on honey - for these big milestones and for the day to day growth that our milestones celebrate.  Here with you for every step in the journey that I can be helpful. 

love, 
dad

Dear ECS: Spring has Sprung

Dear ECS, 

Hey there sweetie, we have had a nice spring thus far and thought I would write you a bit of a snapshot of this time in our life and year.  Spring is a great time of year here in the DC area, the weather is really great (although with some spring rain to bring the May flowers), your birthday is an anchor point in our family, the flowers bring delight throughout our neighborhood and beyond, and the verdant green of the trees remind us of life, rebirth and seasonality.  

It is a time for everyone in our family, Rosy loves chasing around all the squirrels, and even the deer that have come snooping into our yard.  Your mom is really enjoying working on the yard and planting flowers, herbs and other plants that will make our life more delightful in the near and long term.  You are so loving playing in the neighbor with all your friends, zipping this way and that, doing Earth Day clean up on the creek, and helping out with the aforementioned yard work.  Me?  I am loving the weather for trail runs, patio hangouts with friends and firing up the BBQ.  

We also traveled along the east coast up to Maine and visiting friends in Cambridge and NYC.  We were the rare DC folks who headed north for spring break - where it was much less spring.  The trees remained bare and the wind sometimes biting.  But, the grace and peace we feel being up in Maine was so welcome and a pace of life up there really calms all of our souls.  Seeing you get dirty in the woods and romping around the island with your friends made us so happy and grateful for our time up there in the fall of 2020 and the relationships that have flowered as a result. 

On the way up to Maine, we stopped with dear friends in Cambridge - it had been too long since we saw them.  It had been years since you hung out with their kiddos and those years melted away very quickly, after a few minutes of understandable shyness, and it was like you had a playdate just a week ago.  That melting away of time and distance is one of my favorite parts of deep friends and fellowship and to see it play out with you and your relationships was a real cherry on top of a great visit. 

We also got to spend quality time walking around the Cambridge community, take in the Charles River, learn about the history on our friends' street that predates our nation’s founding by more than a century, and eat yummy food.  Also a bonus was getting to seeing your babas (my parents), who were in Boston for the weekend. 

And then on our way back from Maine, we visited close friends in Brooklyn.  These are friends from our time in Ethiopia, and they have been part of your life for more than half of your life.  They have seen you go from being a cute toddler to the kiddo you are today, which is quite a journey and progress and development.  We had so much fun in our visit, that we popped back up to NYC for a redux weekend that was even more majestic and special, in a huge part for me because I got to go to a Celts playoff game against the Nets - game three of that series and a huge Celts win.  

Walking around Brooklyn as a family, as we supported our friends running the Brooklyn half marathon the next day, was an experience we will not soon forget.  Your query and plans for us to move to NYC that day was very clear proof you are in agreement. 

So, yes honey, spring has sprung and we will keep savoring the beauty of our environment and the spirit of renewal and rebirth. 

love,

dad

Dear ECS: Counting the Days

730 days - that is how long it has been since we left our apartment in Egypt to today, here in DC/MD.  730 days feels like a long time, and also reduces so much living to a single data point.  One thing that has been really cool to see in you is how numbers and counting have become a big part of how you keep track of everything.  And the cool part is that I do the same thing.  We have lists, we know how many runs it will be before we head home, and how many we have done.   Monitoring. 

730 day latergrams  

In that vein we have been thinking and talking about numbers a lot lately.  A few mornings, we have used this great website that has us putting in end and start dates and tells us how many days in-between.  Something about having specifics grounds us both in the present and the things that have happen (life being born) and the stuff to come (like going to college in 4089 or so days).  

594 days 

Below is a compilation of things I have run the numbers for you and the ones we have done together.  What I love is that there is real variance in the days, some feel like way too long and some way too short.  And also that this list is really about you and the things that are important to you.  I would have many of the same things but also a slightly different list. 

Our numbers 

• 2,500 days since you were born
• 15,900 days since mom was born
• 15,400 days since I was born
• 594 days since we got Rosy in Hershey, PA
• 730 days since we left Egypt 
• 18 days since we last skied as a family
• 100 days since Christmas 
• 24 days since Muriel got home from out West
• 74 days until your last day of 1st grade

Some questions you just asked me; 

• How many days since rosy was born: 762 days 
• How many days since we got married: 5502 days 
• How many days until elle goes to college: 4089 days 
• How many days since I graduated from college: 6504 days 
• How many days since soccer/futbol was invented: 57,273 days 
• How many days since America was born: 89,012 days (!) 

Looking backwards 

The questions that comes to my mind whenever we play the “how many days” game as an adult is - what have I been doing with these days?  Have they been used to good effect and affect?  Obviously can’t change how those days have been spent and used, but also mindful that these 15k+ days are a vivid and clear summary of my time on this earth.  I won’t be here forever.  Hoping for many more thousands of days, as well. 

Looking forward 

My favorite part of our data driven days ethos is forward looking.  What will happen and when will it happen.  Is 4k days until you go to college too many days, or too few?  How do we feel about the 74 days until first grade is wrapped up and you move on to 2nd grade.  Is 80 days enough summer vacation for kids your age? I think not, but also know you will get everything possible from those 80 days. 

Your numbers/days 

Something about the numbers is really interesting inter-generationally.  Projecting forward from your 2,500 days, thereabouts, will in some future equal my days today.  Using our beloved website, this will be in the middle of 2057.  

I have never felt so old.  No pressure honey.

love,

dad 

Dear ECS: Where we are at

Dear ECS, 

Well it has again been a super duper long time since our last post.  Sorry about that sweetie.  I started this on a train between DC and NYC, tried to find some time (and failed, clearly) over the holidays and here it is in mid February.  So much has happened in our life it is hard to even think back to our last couple of updates about our summer cross country trip and the big fire in South Lake Tahoe.  So much has happened in our communities and in our world since those updates last summer.  

Now we have snow days and ski days, at least that is our dominate family recreation these days, both here in DC and out in Utah for the holidays.  Here are a few other new things; 

• Your new (2021-2022) bi-lingual 50/50 school. 
• A new language (Spanish) for you after several early years in the French system. 
• New music lessons for the ukulele and keyboard. 
• Our wonderful home here in Takoma Park. 
• New dear friends and playdates in the neighborhood. 
• New traditions - like Thanksgivings up in Maine for the next few years.  
• Beloved new local spots throughout the DMV. 

In some sense, after quite a whirlwind that had the Korol family live in 5 houses over 19 months across 2020 and 2021, we are able to settle into our life here.  I didn’t quite see how much work all that change was and am so mindful of how lucky we were to be able to make those changes through that period.  But sort of how it takes some time to gain perspective, I am seeing now how we all needed this time to take some deep breaths.  

Deep breaths help us calm our heart when we are scared or maybe a bit over our heads on a new ski slope.  Deep breaths help us make great music and art, together or as a solo act.  Deep breaths help us see the truth that might be a bit illusive.  Deep breaths bring us back to the present, from either an imagined future or reflecting back on a past we can’t change.  Deep breaths help us get through the comfortable and discomforting feelings while we are learning and growing.  Deep breaths make me grateful.  So we try to take some more deep breaths as a family. 

Things haven’t been super easy these last many months, of that there is no doubt.  Challenges for each of our family and challenges for us as a family.  How could it not - with Covid surges, more zoom school days, trying to do too much and juggle it all, plans disrupted (so many plans), and realizing the fragility of the systems we rely on to life in the world.  

We keep moving forward, helping each other and others.  And of course, our little dog, Rosy,  helps us all.  Onward. 

love,

dad