izzy r

mira· best friend · since kreuzberg, year 9 · the one who made thispinned

iz — i have known you since the autumn we both ended up at the same kreuzberg school at fourteen and you sat next to me in english and asked me, in the tone you use for waiters, what i thought of the new charli album. it was 2022. i had not, at that point, thought of the new charli album. you have, since then, made me think about a great many things i would not have thought about otherwise. eighteen, iz. i did the wall. i did the cards. i did the bluetooth speaker. i did not, this once, do the playlist. you are the smartest person on this floor tonight, which is, looking at this floor, saying quite a lot. love you the most. — m

leo· younger brother · 14 · drums + maths + being quiet

big sister — i am writing this on the train from prenzlauer berg and i have, against my better judgement, made the playlist. it's on a usb. mira said i could give it to you privately so nobody else has to hear it. you turned 18 today. i am 14. when i was 7 you sat on the kitchen counter and told me, very seriously, that the secret to being a person was to pick the three things you wanted to be good at and then stop apologising for not being good at the rest. i wrote it on the inside cover of my school planner. it has been there for seven years. it has, broadly, worked. i picked: drums, maths, being quiet. i am, on at least two of these, doing fine. happy birthday, iz. you are still my favourite. don't tell mama. — leo

priya· friend · moved to lisbon last september · still arguing in the group chat

iz — priya here, writing this from a sublet in príncipe real on a wednesday at half past eleven at night, with the windows open and the cats next door shouting at each other and the lisbon air doing the thing it does in june where it smells, against all reasonable physics, of figs. i miss you. i miss the long walk down rosenthaler. i miss arguing with you in front of the soft serve place on alte schönhauser. i miss the fact that you are the only person i have ever met who can tell me, with a straight face, that an outfit "lacks editorial intent" and then explain, correctly, what she means. eighteen. the year you turn into someone. you have, frankly, been someone since you were about eleven. the rest of us are catching up. happy birthday, iz. come to lisbon in august. the flat has a spare room. the cats are negotiable. — pri xx

felix· boyfriend · 11 months in · still late to everything

iz — felix here, writing this from the floor of my room at half past two on a thursday morning because mira asked me three days ago and i, predictably, left it to the night before. i am sorry for being on type. you knew this would happen. you have, in the eleven months we have been together, correctly predicted every single time i would be late, including the time i was late to meet your mum, which i am still, technically, apologising for. the first night at the festsaal kreuzberg in august last year you stood on the smoking terrace at 1am with a glass of water and told me that the thing you wanted most, more than anything, was to not, at eighteen, become anyone's idea of who you should be. i think about it constantly. i am, against my own laziness, trying. happy birthday, iz. i love you a great deal. the dress you wore to mine's thing in april — please put it on tonight. — f x

dr. annette vogel· art history seminar tutor · fu berlin · the only one in formal german

Dear Isabel, Dr. Vogel writing — your art history seminar tutor at the Freie Universität over the spring semester, on the Wednesday afternoon course on twentieth-century photography. I hesitated, when Mira contacted me, about whether it was appropriate to contribute to this. I have decided, on reflection, that it is. You are eighteen on Saturday, and you have submitted, this semester, the single most carefully observed undergraduate essay on Wolfgang Tillmans I have read in eleven years of teaching the seminar. Your reading of the 1998 portrait of Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph was, in its quiet way, the kind of observation that academic art history is for. I have, with your permission, kept it in my teaching folder for future cohorts. I am told you have decided not to read History of Art at university, and have instead been accepted to study Philosophy at Humboldt. I think this is, on balance, the correct decision. Tillmans was not, after all, trained as an art historian. With very warm wishes for your eighteenth and for the years that follow it. Prof. Dr. Annette Vogel Kunsthistorisches Institut, FU Berlin

yael· cousin · 26 · tel aviv · keeper of the savta side

izzy mami — yael here, your cousin in tel aviv, eldest of the savta side, writing this on a friday afternoon on the balcony in florentin with the cats and the laundry and the man across the street who has, for nine years, played the same john coltrane record on shabbat. you would love it here. you would, more accurately, walk around the neukölln of it in five minutes and decide it was over. you are eighteen. i am twenty-six. when you were three and we were both at savta's in haifa for the summer you stood on the balcony at the end of a very long afternoon and said, in german first and then in slightly broken hebrew so savta would understand, that the sea was, quote, "doing too much." you were not wrong. it was, that afternoon, doing far too much. i have, in the fifteen years since, thought about that sentence approximately every week. happy birthday, mami. come to tel aviv. the spare room is yours. savta is, technically, still alive and would very much like to see you. love you the most — yael x

mama· mother · 61 · the only one writing in sentences

Isabel — I am writing this on the kitchen table on a Tuesday morning, in proper sentences, with a real pen, because Mira said I could write whatever I wanted and I have decided, at sixty-one, that I want to use punctuation. You were born on a Sunday in June in 2008, at twenty-two minutes past four in the morning, at the Charité, and the very young doctor who handed you to me said, in slightly anxious German, that you were extremely alert for a newborn. You have, since then, been extremely alert for everything. I have not, in eighteen years, ever been able to put anything past you. You are not, I notice, calling me Mama much anymore. You are calling me Eva, the way you call your friends' mothers by their first names, and you do it with the same tone of voice. I have not decided yet whether I mind. I am writing this in the kitchen and you are upstairs in your room — which you have repainted, without asking, the most depressing shade of olive green I have ever seen on a wall — and I love you very much, Isabel. I love you even with the olive green walls. Do not, this weekend, go to Berghain. I am asking only the once. I know you will go anyway. With love — your Mama.

jule· friend · dj residency at ohm wednesdays · keeper of the better edit

iz!! jule here, from the residency at ohm, the wednesday-night one we've been doing since february. i am writing this in the booth on a sunday afternoon before my set tonight and i have, against my own better judgement, queued up exactly the kind of two-hour build you would, if you were here, very politely tell me was "predictable." you are the only seventeen-year-old (eighteen, by the time you read this, sorry, sorry) who has ever walked into the ohm booth at 1am on a wednesday and asked me, on the second visit, why i was playing the wrong overground re-edit of the song and whether i knew there was a better one. i did. i was, in fact, playing the better one. you had heard it twice and remembered it wrong. it is the most charli thing that has ever happened to me, professionally. happy birthday, iz. the booth is yours whenever. — jule x