Oct 24 2017 Birthday
Dear Annie,
Happy Birthday!!! Sixteen today!
I wonder about you so often, imagining how you’ve grown into an adult body, since I haven’t seen you since you were four. Sixteen is old enough to have a love interest. Whether it be a boyfriend or girlfriend, I hope he/she deserves you and doesn’t interfere with your studies or any sports you are participating in. At your age your mother was a champion, almost Olympic, volley ball player.
These beautiful babies are Sierra and Claire, your step sisters or do we call them cousins? Did you know you also have a 17-year old brother Carter? I hear from his mother Lily, and have visited their family in upstate New York about a dozen times over the years, but always as the invisible grandma. This year they have sold the house in NY and moved to South Carolina. No more winters for them. The other picture is of 2 ½ year old Ivan with his dad, your dad’s brother in Washington, D.C. Sierra’s mom tells me your biological dad cries remembering your birthday every year. 
Two years ago I bought a small orange flowering plant and said I’d nurture it in your name. I didn’t know at the time what a large and ever ascending shrub it would become. It’s tiny orange flowers are everywhere on California’s central coast. It has grown like wildfire (let’s say a prayer and send some money to all the folks who have lost their homes recently). Anyway it has gotten so tall from the bigger and bigger pots I kept moving it to, I may have to find a sunny spot just outside our back garden to let it thrive.
Please know that today I hope you will get enough light and love to grow to make a permanent contribution to the landscape of your life.
Love, Invisible Grandma PAT