I Am Proud of My Daughter

A letter from a father to his daughter, whenever she gets around reading it.

The Frontier Psychiatrists is a daily health-themed newsletter. It's written by Owen Scott Muir, M.D., a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist. He's also the father of two children, Trent and Quinn. They are seven-year-old twins. Their mom, Carlene MacMillan, MD and I started the Frontier Psychiatrists as a clubhouse Creator First program back when that was a thing. I’ll transition to first person now because it’s a lot less labored writing exercise.

We have at least one business they run together, Fermata, in Brooklyn, NY. We have two children and consider the future of psychiatry our third.

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As a “determinant of health,” one’s relationship with their family? It matters. Today, I will write an article about why I'm so proud of my daughter.

Quinn is taking ballet seriously this weekend.

Quinn MacMillan Muir is bold. She's funny. She talks— a lot. One of the things I've learned as a parent that surprised me the most? How little influence I have on who my kids are (beyond being related to each other)!

Quinn has very strong opinions. In this respect, she is my child. Her snowman stuffed animal has enthralled her since she was two years old.

She has named this Snowman. He is called Mr. Bitey. Mr. Bitey has an elaborate storyline. He's quite entrepreneurial. Even to say he's quite entrepreneurial is inaccurate because Quinn maintains that Mr. Bitey, despite the “Mr.” moniker, is, in fact, non-binary. Mr. Bitey uses they/them pronouns. This is Quinn's revelation as of about a year ago. Mr. Bitey is important; she reminds everyone regularly.

Quinn holds onto ideas with tenacity and puckishness that I find admirable. Not just among children! She is admirable among people, including all people in the cohort of the tenacity-minded.

I will describe some of Mr. Bitey's antics. This allows me to clarify why I'm so proud of my daughter. We went on a family trip to Costa Rica, and the plane ride back went disastrously poorly. I wrote a little vignette of what happened (from a dad's perspective), shared in a footnote.¹ The summary is as follows:

On the plane ride back, we flew almost to New York, turned around, landed in Mexico, took off again, landed again in El Salvador, and then turned back around the next day and came to New York. All of this? Displeasing. Quinn and her brother Trent decided that Mr. Bitey would build a new airline called Cool Air to compete with Volaris Airlines, the low-cost Mexican carrier that took us on this absurd roundabout.

Quinn has noticed Dad's been writing. She insisted we write a story about Mr. Bitey. Here is the first chapter:

Cool Air: Chapter 1

Mr. Bitey was a snowman. Mr. Bitey lived in the snow. He was made of snow. He was the best snowman. Everything about winter was good for Mr. Bitey. It was cold. It was snowy. And that's the way he liked it. Every winter, the snow would fall. Every winter, the children would help roll balls of snow and stack them on each other. That is how Mr. Bitey would be reconstituted each winter.

A young girl named Quinn became especially interested in snowmen. But she thought, maybe, could there be something more to Mr. Bitey?

Yes. This was her answer.

Quinn thought that maybe the snowman would be the absolute best snowman if he was able to grow up. But there was a problem: winter would end. What would happen then?

Quinn started talking to Mr. Bitey. She learned things that no one knew before. She learned that the snowman liked the summer as long as it wasn't snowy. Or rainy. He likes nice weather. He just happened to be a snowman. This was quite a paradox. What would Quinn do to help this snowman who loved nice weather?

Quinn knew that she was going to help the best she could. It also turns out that Mr. Bitey, the snowman, also has a mind for entrepreneurship.  However, since he was born in the winter, he couldn't pitch his ideas to people interested in the “Summer Space.” He lacks credibility as a founder made of snow.

Quinn will have the best snowman ever. He would be the best snowman in the whole world. She was sure.

Grammy originally found Mr. Bitey, the stuffed version of the snowman, at the local dump. This, Quinn assures me, is a true story.² Mr. Bitey had been discarded as a stuffed animal by somebody. Somebody who didn't understand the magic of the snowman. But Grammy found Mr. Bitey at the dump and brought him home to Quinn and her brother Trent. This was a special stuffed snowman, but there was something extra special about the snow creature. He was magically linked to the real snowman, Mr. Bitey.  Quinn was only a very young child when the stuffed Mr. Bitey came into her life. And she didn't realize her full power until many years had passed.

A few years later, Quinn turned six years old.³

Quinn had kept her eye out for Snowman since meeting Mr. Bitey. They had been constant companions. She had been watching for Mr. Bitey and other snowmen like him. And she made a miraculous discovery on the eve of her seventh birthday. That's right, another snowman.

At this point in the story, Quinn made sure to interrupt.

She wanted to clarify that her real birthday was in Costa Rica. There are no snowmen in Costa Rica. And she would not want any confusion about the nature of Costa Rica, her birthday, or any false or defamatory statement about the snowman. Costa Rica was a great birthday, and now we can get back to the story with the record corrected.

Mr. Bitey, the stuffed snowman, made a new friend. That new friend?    They met on an airplane. They met on the ride to Costa Rica and thought they would return safely home to New York on Volaris Airlines, a cut-rate airline with a conveniently timed flight theoretically from Costa Rica to New York. After doing zip lines and other exciting things in Costa Rica, they got an extra ticket for Mr. Bitey and his new friend, another snowman.

Quinn wanted to ensure we all understood there was turbulence when we had almost reached New York City, and the plane had the most fearsome announcement. Over the public address system, we heard the pilot say: we're afraid there have been some problems with the weather, and we'll have to turn the plane around!   Wait a minute, Quinn noticed the pilot hadn't yet said where the plane would land. A moment later, the pilot said,

"We will be landing in Cancún. This is where we're going to refuel. Thank you. I will take care of all children and all snowmen on the flight in Cancun."

This seemed crazy to Quinn. She was also very upset. Wasn't Mexico hot? Could the snowman melt?   The tension built as the plane flew further and further toward Cancún, Mexico.   Both Trent and Quinn were very brave, but they were horrified when we got to Cancun. Because instead of refueling the plane, they got us all out of it and put us on another plane.

This wasn't right at all. What could be happening? We were getting on another plane. Children, Trent, Quinn, parents, snowman, everyone. And that plane was taking off. Not to New York City or our destination, but to El Salvador. Why were we going to El Salvador!?

Quinn was quick to point out this made absolutely no sense. Something was going on. Something is not right. Something is wrong. Something was crooked.

When we landed in El Salvador, they gave us sandwiches. Quinn noticed that the sandwiches came before there was any information. This was suspicious. Quinn looked at her mother, looked at her father, and looked at Mr. Bitey. And said something is going on. They shouldn't be feeding sandwiches slowly and laboriously. This is a scam.

Mr. Bitey couldn't help but agree. You see, we learned that Mr. Bitey is a magical snowman at this point. With attendant magical powers. Who also happens to run his own personal airline. Mr. Bitey spoke so that everyone could hear for the first time!

"Quinn," Mr. Bitey said, "the issue here is the airline is a reduced-fee carrier. It is not a very good airline.  They woke everybody up to ask people if they wanted to go to the hotel— but that was a total scam because no one could go to the hotel and back in time. At 3 a.m., another employee woke us to say, “Oh, do you want to volunteer for a later flight?” Mr. Bitey had a slight smile.

“Quinn, they are just trying to distract us from the fact that all of this is about money. Slow sandwiches are cheaper than hotel rooms,” Mr. Bitey offered.

We were told that the flight would be at 8 a.m. The children would have to sleep on the floor of the airport. It was only thanks to the stuffies they brought—including Mr. Bitey!— that we could get comfortable. Mr. Bitey was pleased to point out that he was a stuffy, too. And also a snowman. But Quinn didn't sleep on him. She used his friend, the turtle stuffy, instead.

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That chapter is a collaboration between a 7-year-old girl and her dad. It sets up my point of pride: I have a daughter I respect. She has held onto the character of Mr. Bitey since she was two years old. She continues to iterate on his character, filling in more backstory and creating detail and color. She is creative and unapologetic. Kids at school started making fun of her fixation on the character of Mr. Bitey. Now, it’s not exactly normal seven-year-old stuff for a kid to want to talk about their stuffed animal at school all the time. But Quinn? Mr. Bitey is her thing.

The thing I find so admirable, however, is that Quinn didn’t even remotely care about the cynical disinterest of her peers. She likes Mr. Bitey. She doesn’t care what other kids think. She is into it. She isn’t stopping, she isn’t apologizing, and she won’t be bullied into pretending Mr. Bitey isn’t cool. He’s a snowman, she points out. OF COURSE, he is cool.

My daughter has the courage of her convictions. I am so, so proud to be her dad.

1. A very strange thing happened.  I was flying to JFK from Costa Rica, home with my family.  It was on the Volaris airline, which is a Mexican airline.   So, to start, Costa Rica is a beautiful country.  I would recommend it to anyone. 

On our flight home, there were limited options.   My twins are 7, and this is the first real family vacation we have ever taken. This is also the first plane ride in their life.  It has been turbulent, and not just when it comes to the literal flight.

We boarded the plane at the San Juan airport, and in what was a first for me, we had a 15-minute stopover in El Salvador.  In El Salvador, some passengers had connecting flights to distant parts, and we were continuing on the same plane to JFK in New York.  However, we had to get off the plan, take. I walked through El Salvador airport security, got metal detected, and ran back down to check in again on the same plane to continue our flight to the US.  This plane, I will take a moment to point out, sucks.  To quote my normally polite son, “This airline is garbage!”  

The Voalris airline doesn’t serve food that is any good. It also charges for, and this is true, every morsel of food of any kind.  This fact will become important later.  The food options are chips or…chips.  Ok, some cookies.  But we are looking at nacho cheese and tortilla chips at $7 per package.  

About 30 minutes till JFK, and we are told, with a plausible amount of turbulence, that the plane is being diverted and we will have to land and refuel because it’s unsafe in New York.  It’s worth noting that Volaris has no wifi or plugs for power, in-flight entertainment, or any way to check what is happening.  It’s like you get on a plane that is also a time machine to a deprived version of 1983.  I traveled a lot as a kid, and I never was on a plan with a complete absence of anything to occupy one’s mind.  Usually, I would be into this.  I regularly don’t get wifi on a plane.  I wrote a whole book of poetry that I’ve submitted to some competitions on flights where I chose not to get Wifi.  

My lack of ease with this state of affairs started to encroach on my poetic soul right around the moment when they announced the plan for where the plan would be diverted to, however.  Instead of landing in Pittsburg, Charlotte, or any other reasonable airport, we were told the plane was being diverted to…Cancun Mexico.  At the time of this announcement, the story was that there was “bad weather” in New York, and we needed to refuel.  One could be forgiven for wondering why it made sense to fly almost 3 hours and 55 minutes to Cancun from just south of JFK to refuel.

With the level of foreshadowing, I’m setting up, the uneasy story I'm telling probably tips you off that the story doesn’t end with “ and in Cancun we refilled, and now I’m home safe.”

Dear Readers, your intuition would be correct.  

As my son exclaimed as we landed back in El Salvador, “At least we are somewhere.”

Yes, you read that correctly, El Salvador; why am I back in El Salvador?

Let’s hope a magic snowman solves this for us.  

2. I am just relating the story she tells.

3. She is now seven.