THE PAST, THE FUTURE AND ALL THAT STUFF

Another of the many and unexpectedly great funs of having grandies is the letters they now and then send like young bursts of life as they learn to write and want to communicate to us all the important events in the rush of their daily lives.

We just got a bright envelope full of little pages in all colors, shapes and sizes from Mitsuki, who appears to be quite the epistolarian: pages from little cartoony notebooks, kitty postits, pages with ice cream cone stickers stuck on them, bits of paper with drawings on them of grownups, kids, trees and animals, all scribed all over with kiddy thoughts meticulously wrangled out of a language's newlearned lettering... It's fun, intriguing and ultimately endearing to puzzle out the scripted elements of a cute new life learning about the world, the past, the future and all that stuff, just like you yourself did. And are doing, as you read.

One of Mitsuki's miniletters says she is well and asks are we also, the end, she seems to think that all her grandparents live together and intermingle all the time, she hasn't got that figured out yet like older sister Kaya has, without ever asking anybody about the facts of it all-- give Mitsuki and sister Miasa another year or two. It's astonishing each time you realize anew all the things kidlets have to learn - and do learn, without even trying - it all just falls into place in their heads and hearts, and they write about it now and then.

And in the inner sanctum of the cartoonly colored envelope bearing a cluster of interesting drawn-on stamps surrounding the genuine but uninteresting stamp, there is a treasurously small packet of paper wrapped and folded and wrapped some more that clearly contains something special and says on it Bob & Echo, and after unwrapping and unfolding and unwrapping all the layers that tiny hands love to take the time to place upon their treasures to keep them safe, there at the heart are four tiny glass beads of different colors: two for me and two for Echo.

This weekend I'll make a two-bead string necklace and wear it. Nothing like a bit of love around your neck.