When our first granddaughter was born, it was an exciting time for my husband and me, as it is for most first-time grandparents. My husband had never known any of his grandparents.
They were all deceased by the time of his birth, so when we married, he experienced the closeness I had with my grandparents and heard stories of how my grandparents affected my life and influenced me as I grew up. He talked a great deal about how he wanted to be a good grandparent.
That Christmas, he decided to write a letter to our granddaughter to tell her how important she was to him and how excited he was to experience her birth and be able to share in her life. Although at 7 months of age she couldn’t read the letter, her parents and great-grandmother shared reading the letter and shed tears of joy over the love it represented and the stories of experiences together during her first seven months of life. To my husband’s surprise, our son-in-law asked, “Are you going to write her a letter next year?” Could he say no?…