Dear Robin, I can’t be with you in Brooklyn today, but you will be sharing your first Thanksgiving holiday with your family, that is something I once did faithfully for much of my life. Life is fluid, things change, often in unimaginable ways, and I doubt I will be spending too many holidays with you.

I hope you have a day of joy and connection. And gratitude. You are, in so many ways, a lucky baby.

If we are going to get along and be close, I should warn you that I try and be direct, and the line between being obnoxious and being direct is sometimes fuzzy, just ask your mother about me and she will tell you.

Holidays are really not important to me, and family gatherings have never been especially fulfilling of meaningful to me. So often, they felt strained and difficult, there was usually much more fighting than loving. And to be honest, I was often bored and restless in those gatherings, I couldn’t want for them to end.

So I don’t imagine we will be sharing a lot of holidays together. That doesn’t mean I can’t be a good Grandpa, I am working my way into it, and I think it will work out. We will not be in the center of one another’s lives, that is just the way it worked out, but we will be aware of one another and touch one another’s hearts I think. I can be a good Grandfather, I think, although I am not yet certain what the really means.

I know one grandparent who told her child that if she ever moved away with the grandchildren, it would kill her. I understand her feelings, but I don’t want to go in that direction. Like my daughter, I want you to have your own life, and take it in whatever place or direction works for you. And you are already a good distance away from me, so my job is to get used to that and be comfortable with it.

I doubt that my troubled experience of family is true of you today, or in the future.  I will explain this to you one day if you care to hear it.

You are lucky to have Emma as a mother and Jay as a father. They are both loving and sensible and thoughtful. I like the way you stare at the camera, or smile at it. That is likely to be good news for us. My photography sometimes irritates people, but I don’t think that will be the case for  you. You seem to be a strong woman to me, and strong women look at the camera just as you are, and dare the shutter to click.

I gather that you are wary of taking your bottles from people other than your mother and father right now, I remember that, I am good at distractions and diversions. You mother doesn’t remember my honking this little horn at her when she cried. The tears turned to smiles in seconds.

If this is still going on when I next visit,  I’ll try and shake things up, I have some ideas. Your mother does not perhaps remember that she did the same thing, and I have some ideas  about it. In the meantime, have a great day, surrounded by people who love you and be with you. I am grateful for you.