Contact

So, anyway, a few weeks ago my soon-to-be-six year-old son Christian was watching a TV show in which one of the characters put a heartfelt message in a bottle and pitched it in a river.

"Hey, I wanna do that!" he exclaimed.

So he did.

With some help from his mother, he wrote a short letter about himself along with his home address and asked whoever found his epistle to write him a letter about themselves (For the record, his four year-old brother Charlie also wrote a letter and put it an a bottle, but decided at the last minute he would rather keep it for himself).

When Christian returned home from the river, he couldn't contain his excitement over his letter and how delighted would be the lucky recipient of his bottle.

What a sweet sentiment, his mother and I thought, realizing that by far the most likely recipient of the bottle was a Hennepin County trash heap. And how quaint the notion that there is someone out there somewhere to talk to about your life who will want to know more about you simply because you exist and will want to tell you about themselves and share their lives with you while asking for nothing in return.

We've all wistfully wished for this at some point in our lives, haven't we?

It's the thought that counts, my dear son.

A few days ago, Christian received the below letter from Cyrus, a nine year-old Native American boy living on a reservation in Garrison, MN.