Happy (Belated) Birthday, Sava

Dear Sava,

It is almost two months to the day since you turned the inconceivable age of eleven. For the first time in years, I have been unforgivably delinquent in my duty to write this birthday message.
As I considered the reasons for this delay, I realized that--yes--there is the very credible excuse of a family life too full during the last couple of months of school. However, after some soul-searching, I also had to admit that a much less easily surmountable obstacle has kept me from writing: over the past year, as if at the inexorable command of some higher force, my relationship with you has come to feel deeply private. Whereas when you were young I scrupulously wrote down all of your cute sayings and unselfconscious witticisms, now--at the ripe age of eleven--you tell me things that are meant for me and me alone.

Just in the last few months, for instance, you have launched a new bedtime tradition that we both now refer to as "confessions." These are divulgences of (mostly) minor misdemeanors, often involving what you perceive as your less than perfectly ethical relationship to other people. I won't disclose any of these confessions here, but I'd like you to know that, in nine out of ten instances, what you consider a reason for worry or guilt is simply a symptom of your sensitivity and kindness. You care about others, and you agonize over social situations that other children often don't even notice; you want to do right, but you also recognize that your own desire to fit in and to maintain friendships sometimes presents you with excruciating moral choices. Still, as at least one of your teachers told me, the really important thing is that you notice and you care.

Other kids' recognition of your role as a vehicle for their collective moral conscience took tangible form during the last week of school, when you came home one day bearing this year's fifth-grade award for Citizenship. This is an award for which students nominate independently one boy and one girl from each class, and it recognizes the students who are most consistently kind, helpful, and polite. You had not expected the award, which made it all the more special when you received it, and, two weeks later, you still treasure it almost as much as your dad and I do (as your parents, we reserve the right to be more proud of your every good moment than you will ever be). Had anyone asked me what award I wished either of my kids would bring home at some point in their school career, the one recognizing good Citizenship would have been the first and only one to come to mind. You've already done everything we could ever have hoped. We love you more than you could ever know.
And now . . . on to the less heavy stuff.

Over the past year, you have developed an unquenchable passion for robotics. Thanks to the mom of one of your classmates, you got introduced to the world of VexIQ Robotics, and you have now participated in about a dozen tournaments, including, incredibly, the California State Championship. You love to build, and you love to do it with your friends. Your passion for tinkering, evident from the time you were roughly a year old, is now poured daily into the making of contraptions that lift hexballs, climb bridges, drop rings, etc. It is a joy to watch you do something with such unadulterated passion.

The Electric Pythons! 

receiving a Creativity award

You also love to hang out with your friends. Gone are the days when you seemed self-contained and self-sufficient, content to play with anyone or no one. You now have a stable group of about half a dozen friends--many of them also participating in robotics--and your daily interactions with them feel far more important than anything else in your life. Even though you suffer the indignity of not having a smart phone, unlike all of them, and not being allowed to play more than an hour of video games per week, which is less than any of them, you still find plenty to connect you to these boys. We feel grateful and awed that you have found your tribe.

Your birthday party: just as you dreamed it, and just as it happened--

You remain a reader, mostly of science fiction and realistic fiction. You've recently branched off into Tolkien, but the jury is still out on whether you love or just like The Lord of the Rings (you did love The Hobbit). You read enormous books with titles like The Elements for pleasure, and you still have a remarkable memory for everything.

You have no objection to the occasional comic, too--

To our utter shock, you came home one day this spring and told us that you had joined the school newspaper. Lacking an evident enthusiasm for writing, and embracing a minimalist style in all your written endeavors at school, you had given us *no* clue that joining the newspaper was something that interested you. Your initiative and self-propelled engagement genuinely floored us. You wrote a piece about robotics in the first month of being on the paper and a piece about traveling to Zion in the second month (in the second piece, the thing you most wanted to write about was how much you'd loved the fillet mignon at a restaurant we visited twice on our trip). You tell us that you intend to continue to write next year.

Lastly, amazingly, you remain a fabulous and beloved brother. With a ratio of about one to nine of times when you and Raya annoy each other to times when you delight each other, your dad and I feel like very lucky parents. Raya admires you, looks up to you, and finds you funny and amusing. You know how to take (kind) brotherly advantage of her, and you appreciate her good qualities, such as her multiple enthusiasms. You are eager to try things she loves--like ballroom dancing--but you also have a strong sense of where your own priorities belong. We can discern in your mutual care for each other the roots of an enduring and truly supportive sibling relationship.

 

And despite all the above, you are so much more than words can possibly express, my dear boy. We love you to the moon and back.

Happy eleventh birthday, my love.