Neel was thrilled to get a chance to clean out our shed this weekend (go ahead and ask if I'm kidding), and he stumbled across this rare treat mixed in with a pack of asters. It's a letter from my dad to his parents, written when he was at work (a-hem, I never waste time at work, so clearly that genetic defect jumped a generation) when I was a whopping five months old. He writes about the house they just moved into (the first house I remember), my five-month doctor's appointment (I'm getting ready to crawl) and a recent illness of my granddad's.

Nearly forty years old, that letter is (but not quite) and it's so quintessentially my dad. I can picture that house so well, and my grandparents, and my mom. A little bit of our history, encapsulated.