Dear Izzy,
Well. This has been a year we will never forget! It has been a year of "changes!" Your first school year at Bryn Mawr was off to a great start. You made new friends and excelled in your classes. You were busy taking dance classes, playing field hockey, and baking, painting and drawing in your free time. You were invited to play on a new lacrosse team and won two fall tournaments.
We celebrated Halloween and you were the perfect Eleven/Bob Ross 😉. We spent an awesome day in New York City with Kaitlyn and Sarah. It was the perfect Girls' Day of shopping and seeing Beetlejuice on Broadway!
We spent the holidays with family. We baked cookies, decorated the Christmas tree and volunteered at Christmas Eve Mass. We took an amazing trip to Cayman Islands to celebrate New Year's Eve! Your basketball team won the CMRC Championship.
Then, one hundred and seventy-two days ago, schools closed and we were told to stay home and social distance from family. Dance classes and sports were canceled, school was moved online, trips were postponed. But somehow you managed to deal with the disappointments with grace and optimism. You performed dances in the basement and you participated fully in your Zoom classes. Your long awaited class camping trip to Echo Hill was virtual, but that didn't stop you from pitching a tent in the backyard and listening to Ms. Sadler read you a story each evening. Your fable was chosen to be a part of the fifth grade play that was narrated and presented as a slideshow, but you were just as proud of your work as if it had been performed on the stage. You celebrated your friends with birthday parades and stood in Grandma’s yard to wish Stella a Happy Birthday! You completed challenges and races for your lacrosse team. You welcomed our new puppy, Frankie, into our family. You humored me by working on puzzles and watching cheesy TV shows and 80's movies. You incorporated your love of baking into science class when you made a cell model out of a cake!
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In June, you graduated from Lower School (virtually, of course) and although things were far from normal, we had an awesome summer. You played lacrosse and swam for the Summer Hill Stingrays. We spent many weeks at the beach. We enjoyed sunny days breathing in the ocean air and feeling the sand in our toes. We kept our circle of beach chairs six feet apart from others and wore masks when shopping at our favorite surf shops. We had fireworks and a fire pit on the beach. And yesterday, we ended the summer as we always do, with a family brunch on the patio to celebrate YOU! It may not have been the huge party of years' past, but it was a wonderful day! Today, you were able to go to school for Middle School Orientation. And although, you start Middle School online tomorrow, I know you will make the best of the situation until you can be on campus again. I can always count on you to be the sunshine even on stormy days!
I love you. You will forever be my best girl.
Mom
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