It’s very rare to get wonderful emails.
An awful lot of what we get is spam and much of the rest tends to be people trying to get us to give someone money, vote for someone else or just to e annoying in some way.
Yes, there are occasional nice emails.
But I’ve gotten three in the last 24 hours.
One was wonderful news about my youngest grandchild. Albanie Yvonne has a big sister and four big brothers, all of whom are wonderful kids. She was born on Halloween 2014, so she celebrated her ninth birthday two days ago. I know of at least one year when her mother was planning a birthday party for her and Albanie asked if the party could please not be a Halloween theme.
Birthdays on or close to holidays can be a pain. My first cousin Ruth Ford was born the day after Christmas. I sometimes wonder if she waited till after midnight to be born because who wants to have your birthday on Christmas Day.
My own birthday was two weeks before Christmas and that is definitely close enough.
But I digress.
As you so often do, Mike ...
At any rate, Albanie is in the third grade at the international school in Tunis, and my daughter Pauline sent us a copy of a wonderful note from her teacher.
“I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to recognize and celebrate Albanie’s outstanding performance and dedication as a student in our classroom.
“Albanie consistently demonstrates exceptional qualities that make her a valuable asset to our learning environment. She consistently engages in her studies, maintains an exemplary level of participation, and has truly become a role model for her peers.
“I am proud to have such an exceptional student in our classroom. Your partnership in Albanie’s education is greatly appreciated.”
I think the appropriate Grandfather response to that is “Wow!”
Another message from my daughter was to wish Nicole and me a happy wedding anniversary. As of today, my lovely wife and I have been married 31 years. It was a second marriage for both of us and we took our vows at City Hall in Los Angeles. Since it was a second marriage, both Pauline and her brother Virgile were there for the ceremony.
She was 12 and he was 7, and I have been part of their lives ever since. They have grown to be exceptional adults and I am truly blessed that I was able to make a small contribution to both of them.
The third email wasn’t family, and I won’t mention her name except to say she was a high school classmate and is a very nice person.
She was one of the people to whom I sent copies of my novel with the hope that they would read it and write reviews on Amazon for me.
Well, she read it and loved it.
She actually thanked me for sending it to her and promised a glowing review.
Well, I think it was John Denver who said it first back in the 1980s.
Some days are diamonds.