Dear Esmé,
Yesterday you turned five. You can read, you are an ace with numbers, and you are the fastest runner I’ve ever met. You’re working on riding a pedal bike, but still aren’t very interested in climbing the stuff at the park. I doubt you ever will be. You like to watch. Observe. Take note. Which is entirely in keeping with the scientist in you.
You and science are wonderful friends. You adore facts, and research. Bugs and rocks and sticks. Dead things. You want to know more about every subject that sparks your curiosity. Speaking of your curiosity, it is endless. Sparkling and sparking and utterly without end.
You are a born storyteller. You love telling a good yarn as much as you love someone telling you one, or reading to you. You come up with stories that are simply riveting.
You love to learn. You know that a question begets information. You know that if you ask, you will find out. You know that there is nothing you can’t ask us. Nothing that we won’t help you figure you out. Nothing that is out of your reach when it comes to knowledge.
You are a skilled artist and inventor. Every day you come up with creations that surprise and delight. A message in a helicopter bottle that will fly itself to the North Pole. A track for the hexbugs out of carboard tubes and a stack of books.
Your heart is enormous, and fragile. You carry it with you everywhere you go, and sometimes it fills to overflowing and you are reduced to tears. Sometimes the weight of it in your hands slows you down. Sometimes your hands are so full of your heart that you can’t quite do anything else but tend to it.
You care deeply about nearly everything that has to do with feelings and relationships and people, and you could care less about the typical trappings of many kids your age. I still haven’t found the toy that really gets you excited. Not in five years. You rarely go in to your bedroom, and certainly not to sleep.
You have more freedom than most kids I know. Freedom to follow your interests, and the means to do it. Freedom to do nothing at all, which for a kid like you is a lot. You are often in your head, doing very important work. Thinking very big thoughts. Dreaming Big Dreams.
We’re in Mexico for your fifth birthday, and we woke you with a little treasure hunt, with clues about our plans for the day. We went horseback riding, and had a pinata, and blew out candles and sang the birthday song many times over. Whenever anyone in the village heard that it was your birthday, they sang to you too, and gave you fruit and candy and big smiles.
I’m excited for this coming year for you, and for all of us together. I love thinking of you and your interests and how we can weave things like viruses and pathogens and antibodies into our everyday living. I love re-learning math with you, and seeing it through the eyes of someone who still loves it and probably always will.
We have big plans. This trip to Mexico is just the start of another amazing year with you. I promise that you can look forward to many nights beside a campfire, lots of adventures, and loads of learning the things you want to, when you want to, and how you want to.
I love you, Esmé. I’m so lucky to be your mama.
