August 13, 2026
Dear Leland and Everett,
The end of our summer was something of a blur. We came home from Taiwan and struggled mightily (at least Leland and I did)adjusting to jet lag. We recently returned from a long weekend with your Uncle in SoCal. He took us to Disneyland and your favorite gaming spot across the street from where he lives. You went to a trampoline park, and visited all your favorite food spots (including daily trips to your precious Italian ice spot). The weather was hot, which affected our ability to sleep (that and you guys just always stay up too late when we travel down there). We came home late Tuesday morning and the two of you went straight from the airport to a playdate with a bunch of your friends; given how much we’ve travelled this summer, I was really glad you got a day to reconnect with some friends.
Tuesday night I announced to the two of you that my summer with you was over, and that I was going to take Wednesday to recover. What this meant in practice was still that I spent the day with the two of you, it just meant that I refused to do anything I didn’t genuinely want to do. In the morning before Leland woke up, Everett and I watched TV, and I insisted on watching things I wanted to watch (not just what Everett wanted to watch). When Leland asked to go outside and throw a football around, I flat said no. Normally I enjoy doing things with the two of you such that, combined with my natural agreeable nature (I score highly in agreeableness on personality tests), I’m normally pretty flexible in letting the two of you decide the things we do together. Sometimes I might steer our activities in a certain direction, negotiate for a backup option, or make tradeoffs (e.g. we’ll do what you want to do after we do what I want to do, or vice versa), but normally I’m pretty flexible about what we do together. Not yesterday. Yesterday I was willing to hang out with you guys, but found myself noticeably rigid in terms of defining which activities were acceptable.
I am glad I warned you two the day before; even still, my change in demeanor I think came as something of a surprise. You both handled it well, part of which I attribute to the authenticity with which I expressed my plans and needs. The truth is that I was wiped yesterday. I have sincerely loved our summer together, but I was completely exhausted. My body was essentially demanding that I start taking care of myself, a sentiment I expressed genuinely and earnestly to the two of you.
I was a little worried about how this morning would go: you guys looked pretty sleep deprived when we got home from your Uncle’s house. And while you slept in (Leland) and/or napped Wednesday (Everett) and went to bed early Wednesday night, I worried you still might not be rested for school today.
Whether you were rested or not, the two of you woke up and got ready for school without much fuss. Everett had woken up and mostly completed his morning jobs before Leland I emerged into the living room; I was struck by Everett’s display of maturity. And while Leland is no morning person, he woke up and got ready rather seamlessly.
Per tradition, we measured both of your heights, and learned that both of you grew close to an inch over the summer. This was more than I expected, but not totally shocking: you both are undergoing body transformations that are interesting to watch.
Let’s start with Leland. Leland, your face has widened, partly due to a dental expander you wore from the beginning of the year until last week. Your cheeks are skinnier, and your face more angular. You are in the process of losing the last of your baby teeth. Your torso is thin and elongating. For reasons I can’t quite describe, my intuition tells me that your body is ready to add some muscle, particularly to your torso and arms.
Interesting story, only partially related. Leland, you’ve been exceedingly modest your whole life. You’ve never been willing to take your shirt off in public, nor to swim without a rash guard (a sort of swim shirt to protect from sunburn). Well, this summer you stopped wearing your rash guard. I first noticed at a pool party we attended in Taiwan, and it’s possible you were just mimicking your friends who were also not wearing shirts. Regardless, this was notable, and it continued when we checked into our hotel and went to the pool on consecutive days at the end of the trip. Both days you went shirtless. An entertaining story came out of this, where you brushed off your mom’s demand that you put sunscreen on your body. I think you did sunscreen, but did so lazily and sloppily. In related news, you experienced the first sunburn of your life, which tormented you for about two solid days afterward. In fairness to you, you probably deserved your parents helping you put sunscreen on your torso for the first time. On the other hand, you were sufficiently dismissive of your mom’s direction that maybe you needed to learn a valuable lesson.
Everett’s body has changed too, and in ways that have surprised me. Leland will soon enter puberty if he hasn’t already, so significant changes are to be expected for him. Approaching 9 years old, Everett’s age does not imply body transformation. And yet. Everett, your body filled out this summer, such that your brother outweighs you by less than ten pounds despite being four and a half inches taller. Until now I would have always described you as wiry, now your build is almost husky. Your wrists and ankles are about as big around as your brother’s. You put on enough weight this summer that, for the first time, the word “chunky” comes to mind when I look at you. Your mom worries that you are getting fat, but I do not: now that we are back home for the summer, I am confident your activity levels will increase and your food intake will be healthy enough that you will lose the very few pounds of excess you put on this summer.
The extra weight is mostly not excess. You added a lot of muscle this summer, to the point where I strongly suspect you have more muscle mass than your brother. I do not mean to suggest you are stronger, just that your muscles likely weigh more than his do. Your hips, butt, and abdomen area have filled out dramatically, and (from roughhousing with you) it’s clear to me these areas are remarkably powerful and strong.
Everett, your legs have gotten hairier this summer, to the point where your leg hair is now (for the first time for either of you) visible to the naked eye from a reasonable distance. This isn’t the type of leg hair I would associate with the onset of puberty, but it’s a notable development nonetheless.
Your body types have long been sufficiently similar that I’ve always assumed they would remain so. Both of you seemed to be following your mom’s trajectory of a thin, wiry frame. Now, Everett seems to be filling out in a way that seems more akin to the way in which my own body developed. Even then, there are differences: I was always a sturdy kid, but I don’t think I was as strong as Everett is through his core. Then again, some of the sports at which I excelled probably required a strong core, so maybe I’m wrong. Either way, now that your two body types are diverging, I’m fascinated to see how they develop from here.
Back to today. Leland resisted breakfast this morning. My dad never ate breakfast, in part because he was too anxious facing the school day. Part of me wonders how much of Leland’s claimed lack of appetite was due to anxiety. Then again, even on the weekends Leland rarely expresses hunger or a desire to eat before about 10 am. But Leland has always eaten breakfast before school willingly, so I’ll be curious to see how this develops in the coming days and weeks.
We have been warned that middle school drop-off is a traffic nightmare. So this morning Leland, in a bit of a role reversal, started pestering me to leave about 20 minutes before school starts (under normal traffic conditions, we live about 5 minutes away). Fortunately for us, the traffic challenges seem to primarily affect people coming from a different direction than our house; drop-off was really pretty seamless.
And so, Leland is now, officially, a middle schooler. Middle school seems like a big change. Like most big changes, I suspect we’ve overestimated the immediate impact, and underestimated the rolling nature of the changes ahead of us. We (and most of the parents, so far as I can tell) are braced as if we expect cataclysm. Typically, in my experience, the changing of eras are felt less as a sudden impact and more as a slow reverberation. We shall see how this one goes.
Everett now gets dropped off later than Leland, and I offered to come back and pick him up if he preferred, and he did. When I got home, Everett was playing with your mom, but hopped up to head to school. On the way out the door Everett said something about being the most popular kid in school. When we pressed, Everett clarified that he thought he was amongst the most well known kids at school, because last year he played with all the 5th graders. I found myself wondering if Everett’s expression of apparent bravado perhaps masked some fear, and maybe Everett was anxious about going to school without his big brother. Everett has dreaded this day (or at least this development of going to school without Leland) for a little over a year now, so at the very least I have to applaud the bravery he displayed heading to school today. Truth be told, I’m quite confident Everett will have a good year, and that going to school without Leland will be good for him. My hope is that Everett will learn to form more of his identity separate from Leland, and will begin to understand who he is and what makes him special. Because like your brother, Everett, you are a remarkable kid.
As I pulled away from the elementary school I noticed there were far more cars parked than normal. Only at that point did I realize that your mom and I have walked you both to class on the first day of school every year at elementary school thus far. I feel a little bad that we didn’t walk Everett to class today, but such is the life of the younger kid. One of our recurring conversations these days is about how life is unfair for both the younger and the older kids, but in different ways. Older kids have fewer privileges at the same age than younger kids, while younger kids’ milestones get treated with less fanfare. Your mom and I try to be fair, but we also try to be upfront about the reality that we will treat you differently.
After I dropped you off, I was very much looking forward to going back to the gym today for the first time in more than two months. Ironically, the power went out in the area, and my gym closed. Fortunately, I can still exercise without the gym, and so I did my normal exercise routine at home. Even though I missed the gym, it felt good to exercise purposefully again.
Last week I managed to catch up with a friend while Leland was getting something of an introduction to the middle school. We swapped updates on our summers. I found myself giving us both some advice. It had a lot to do with staying the course. Doing the work. Embracing the sense of monotony and drudgery that sometimes comes with facing (or seeming to face) the same problems over and over again. I reminded both of us that we’ve felt a recurring theme around the idea of steering into the storm, rather than away from or around it. Somehow these all felt like useful reminders, to both him and me.
I offered an anecdote: when I practice yoga it still hurts the same way it did when I started practicing three years ago; if it weren’t for demonstrable changes in my body, I might be tempted to believe I hadn’t progressed – and thus get demoralized and quit. Even still, I often feel the temptation to quit. I view that as a metaphor for my spiritual practice: I often feel stuck, like I am facing the same challenges again and again. And yet, with any perspective at all it’s clear I’ve progressed substantially in terms of my mental and emotinal wellbeing. At times these reminders help me embrace the temporary challenges of perceived monotony, and dig deeper into problems I’ve been avoiding.
What have I been avoiding? That requires a little detour.
With Leland especially, I’ve always had an intuitive sense of when he was getting stuck with negative energy trapped and needing release. Leland would start becoming unusually whiny, sensitive, and expressive. It’s hard to explain, but I could sorta just tell he needed to let something go. Even as a baby, I would take him into another room (partly so that his mom wouldn’t have to watch). Leland has always, always, always hated being trapped. Nothing infuriates him as quickly and predictably as trapping him; even today, Leland goes crazy the minute he starts to feel physically trapped. And so, I would hold Leland close to my chest. I held him loosely enough that he was of course physically safe, but I also held him tightly enough that he would feel a little trapped. Sure enough, within a few moments Leland would start to get angry and melt down. Having catalyzed the melt down, I would loosen my grip and just hold on to protect both him and me. I would let him cry and scream and punch and kick. It usually only lasted a few minutes; once he let go of the bad energy, he invariably reset and was fine again.
Everett was sufficiently emotionally volatile that he didn’t need prompting: his melt downs happened naturally. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Partly I just matured as a parent, and learned to let him process his own negative emotions naturally (more on how in a moment). Over time, with Everett we merely taught him to direct his energy into safe places, typically by going into his room; from there, he was welcome to scream and hit and kick a pillow or something that wouldn’t hurt him.
One thing I realized along the way was that I had deprived Leland the ability to process his own emotions naturally. By always triggering his melt downs, I worried I might have impeded his ability to let go of crummy emotions on his own. And so, the next time I sensed Leland getting stuck, I took him into the bedroom (like I had done, at a much younger age, with Everett). I made clear that he was not allowed to leave the room, and I stayed with him. But I didn’t make physical contact. Unlike Everett, with whom I tried this at a much younger age and so had a more intuitive sense of how to proceed, Leland got genuinely confused and didn’t know what do to. The confusion deeply frustrated him, adding to the frustration which caused us to go into the bedroom in the first place. As I watched I came to appreciate how his lack of experience processing his own emotions naturally had impeded his ability to handle them now without my help triggering a melt down. Fortunately, his increased frustration eventually led to the meltdown he needed, and I watched him let go of the energy that was stuck as he cried it out. Afterward, he came over, sat in my lap, and gave me a hug. I wish I had let him experience that at a younger age, but I am glad he experienced it while still a child. In that moment, I was proud of Leland for overcoming his programing, figuring out how to melt down and let go of the negative emotions that were trapped inside.
I bring that story up because I sense a similar negative energy stuck in those around me these days. I sense that it’s affecting friends of mine going through divorce, people at my church, our political discourse, and several other friends and loved ones. I don’t exactly know how to describe it other than just a general sense that a yucky energy is stuck and wants to be released, but the people holding the energy have no idea how to let it go (or, in most cases) that it’s even there. As I watch, I can’t help but be reminded how Leland used feel and behave right before I triggered a meltdown.
This observation of stuck energy needing to be released (and reminding me of Leland needing to melt down) has been a recurring theme of the summer. I’ve spent the summer wondering what that observation means, and what it invites me to do. I’m still not at all clear what precisely I can do nor how I can help, but I have had a couple of minor breakthroughs. The first I already mentioned, and that is merely a willingness to steer into the storm. Just being willing to face those who are showing stuck energy is a place to start, though it’s by no means easy. Facing into those harboring bad energy takes a lot of energy. Nevertheless, I am finding an invitation to explore this space.
The other minor breakthrough came while we were at Disneyland. Leland has long hated rollercoasters; your Uncle convinced Everett to go on a roller coaster (which, it turns out, he loved). Leland asked if I wanted to go on the ferris wheel. I’m afraid of heights, so didn’t exactly like the idea, but I wanted Leland to feel like he was getting to do something fun and special while Everett was on the roller coaster with your Uncle, so I said yes. As we stood in line I learned that some of the cars on the ferris wheel swung back and forth while they went around. It was even worse than that; it’s hard to explain, but the cars were on tracks that allowed them to slide back and forth, and then swing back and forth once they hit the end of the track. So going up we slid one direction before swinging, and then going down we slid the other direction before swinging some more. I didn’t mind the ferris wheel itself, but I hated the swinging. I sat clutching the chair, generally hating the experience. And then the thought occurred to me: this is what the discomfort of steering into the storm feels like.
I very much don’t know where these thoughts will take me. There are some things I can say with confidence. First is that things are changing, and my perception is that they are changing at an accelerating pace. The second is that the pace of change is going to lead to some destruction. The third is that the destruction will lead to some opportunities to let go of the negative energies trapped in association with whatever was being destroyed. The fourth is that there are healthier and less healthy ways of releasing the negative energies we feel. The fifth is that I have some room to contribute, though how specifically I don’t know. But (and this is sixth) if I can sense the invitation (or invitations) to steer into the storm, that will likely guide me. And (seventh) the experience is likely to be deeply uncomfortable, somehow akin to swinging on the ferris wheel.
And so, now that the two of you are back in school, I am finding myself still invited to set some boundaries (you will not be shocked to know that I’ve experienced plenty of temptations to put off my creative outputs in favor of all manner of other activities – ranging from mindless distractions to a lingering to do list to texts and phone calls from folks I dearly love…but might need to call back after I finish my creative output for the day). Even as I write this, I find myself tempted to create different reasons to avoid the work. I am observing a familiar point in the spiritual process. Let me see if I can explain.
First, a thought or sensation arises. That thought or sensation crystalizes into some type of understanding of invitation: something I am invited to explore or release or face. What comes next is inevitably temptation and distraction, as I do seemingly whatever I can to avoid doing the work I know I must. Eventually, I start to see the distractions for what they are. Even after I see the distractions clearly, they still manage to keep me distracted for some time. Eventually, I start to calmly accept the work that need be done, and prepare myself. Finally, I lean in, and let the thing run its course.
Very roughly, what I am realizing is that I am in the process of transitioning from being distracted to preparing to do the work. What amuses me every time I reach this stage in the cycle is just how repetitive the cycle proves to be, and yet how difficult (in fact, seemingly increasingly difficult, and only bearable for the confidence built over all the previous cycles) the work continues to be.
Okay, it is time to go pick up Leland and find out how the first day of middle school went. I love you both, and look forward to navigating a pretty different paradigm this year together. Wish us luck.
Love,
Dad
Letters to Leland 