A letter a year
Last week I read the most lovely idea in the new Dutch ‘me-time’ magazine ‘Flow’. Judith (38) writes that every year around their kids’ birthdays, her husband Jacques writes a letter to their children Joseph (16) and Hanna (9). In this letter he discusses what happened the previous year: sad things, happy things, the development of the child, what happened to the parents and family etc.
Sometimes writing the letter takes an afternoon, sometimes it takes him a whole week! When he’s done, he dates the letter, puts it in an envelope with a stamp and mails it to their own address. When the letter arrives, it is put in the safe, unopened.
The whole thing became a real ritual; Jacques started writing the letters when Joseph was one year old…
When the children reach the age of 21, they may open their letters.
I think this is such a wonderful idea. Only one letter a year, so it doesn’t become too detailed. No pictures. In the end it will be a small novel about the life of the child, written by the father!
I think my husband could be reading this… Idea, darling??
xxx Esther
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This is such a sweet idea. I love it!!
are we getting sentimental here at babyccino?
I read it too on some blog, it’s such a sweet idea.
but i do not think my husband would do it…. regularly!
I absolutely love this idea! I have kept all of the letters my father wrote to me over the years and they mean the world to me.
what a terrific idea!!! too bad my husband probably wouldn’t do it! lol
I LOVE this idea… and I might include it in an article I’m editing about enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
Beautiful idea, really really love it. Especially the actual posting of them with stamps and everything. I wonder if I should start, even though my boys are already 5, 3 and 1…
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my husband does the same but at Christmas time – the letter is read on Christmas Eve (which is when we start the christmas celebrations as my husband is german so the 24th is the more prominent day) and then popped into my son’s ‘box’ of important things – the intention is we give this box to him on his 18th birthday. We just had our second child, a daughter, on new year’s eve so I guess now he will have to write 2 letters. It is a lovely idea and especially nice that my husband does it.
My husband and I started a journal for our son shortly before he was born. We started it with letters about how excited we and the rest of our families were that he was coming, about how we met, etc. Since his birth (he’s now 20-mos) we’ve written about his development, how fun he is and about all of his travel adventures. Unfortunately we don’t write nearly as much as we used to. (I just picked up after a six-month hiatus. Hubby hasn’t written in well over a year.) But I really hope that we can give the book to him when he’s older and make sure that he has a written record of all the things that we think are most important for him to know that usually get lost in the shuffle of the everyday. I plan to start another book for our second baby due in June.