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
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