The Annual Letters
Shortly after my daughter Juli-Ann
was born, I started a loving tradition that I know others (with whom I
have subsequently shared this special plan) have also started. I tell you
the idea here both to open your heart with the warmth of my story and also
to encourage you to start this tradition within your own family.
Every year, on her birthday, I
write an Annual Letter to my daughter. I fill it with funny anecdotes that
happened to her that year, hardships or joys, issues that are important
in my life or hers, world events, my predictions for the future, miscellaneous
thoughts, etc. I add to the letter photographs, presents, report cards
and many other types
of mementos that would certainly have otherwise disappeared as the
years
passed.
I keep a folder in my desk drawer
in which, all year long, I place things that I want to include in the envelope
containing her next Annual Letter. Every week, I make short notes
of what I can think of from the week's events that I will want to recall
later in the year to write in her Annual Letter. When her birthday approaches,
I take out that folder and
find it overflowing with ideas, thoughts, poems, cards, treasures,
stories, incidents and memories of all sorts - many of which I had already
forgotten - and which I then eagerly transcribe into that year's Annual
Letter.
Once the letter is written and
all the treasures are inserted into the envelope, I seal it. It then
becomes that year's Annual Letter. On the envelope I always write
"Annual Letter to Juli-Ann from her Daddy on the occasion of her
nth Birthday - to be opened when she is 21 years old."
It is a time capsule of love from
every different year of her life, to her as an adult. It is a gift of loving
memories from one generation to the next. It is a permanent record of her
life written as she was actually living it.
Our tradition is that I show her
the sealed envelope, with the proclamation written on it that she
may read it when she is 21. Then I take her to the bank, open the safe
deposit box and tenderly place that year's Annual Letter on top of the
growing pile of its predecessors.
She sometimes takes them all out to look at them and feel them. She
sometimes
asks me about their contents and I always refuse to tell her
what is inside.
In recent years, Juli-Ann has
given me some of her special childhood treasures, which she is growing
too old for but which she does not want to lose. And she asks me to include
them in her Annual Letter so that she will always have them.
That tradition of writing her
Annual Letters is now one of my most sacred duties as a dad. And, as Juli-Ann
grows older, I can see that it is a growing and special part of her life,
too.
One day, we were sitting with
friends musing about what we will be doing in the future. I cannot recall
the exact words spoken, but it went something like this: I jokingly
told Juli-Ann that on her 61st birthday, she will be playing with her grandchildren
Then I whimsically invented that on her 31st birthday she will be driving
her own kids to hockey practice. Getting into the groove of this funny
game and encouraged by Juli-Ann's evident enjoyment of my fantasies, I
continued. On your 21st birthday, you will be graduating from university.
"No," she interjected.
"I will be too busy reading!"
One of my deepest desires is to
be alive and present to enjoy that wonderful time in the future when
the time capsules are opened and the accumulated mountains of love
come tumbling out of the past, back into my adult daughter's life.
By Raymond L. Aaron
from A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1995 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor
Hansen