Dear 18

Dear 18,

It has been 35 days since life grounded you without cause, and we just want to say thank you for the elegant way you’ve risen to this challenge.

Your senior year ended just as you were getting to the best part. Then this weird, dangerous virus shrank your social circle like accidentally microwaved cellophane until the only humans you got to hang out with were us.

You went from playing pickup basketball with friends in your high school gym to one-on-one in our driveway with a couple of geezers in jeans.

You didn’t get to run a single race this season. In fact, you never even got to practice track, nor wear the cool, new sweats you admired. Not once.

Prom? Canceled before you even got to ask a date or settle on the suit you talked about for weeks.

Still, you get up every morning (sometimes earlier than others), and you find a reason to smile. You take long walks with me because they allow you to chat, stretch your legs and, most importantly, flirt with passing young ladies from a safe social distance.

You wash your hands thoroughly now and more often than you ever thought you would and take frequent showers almost without complaint.

You make plans for a future no one can predict.

Adaptability will be your hallmark and that of your whole generation.

These last few weeks of 12th grade are supposed to provide the thrust you need to launch yourself into adulthood and we, wildly cheering from stadium seats as you move that tassel from right to left, should be your rocket boosters.

And we will. We are. We’re wildly cheering for you right this very second.

Go get ‘em, 18. 

These are extraordinary times and they are producing some extraordinary folk.

Like you.