The Power of a Letter

This story has nothing much to do with Photography but I wanted to share it as it restores my faith in people.

Over the weekend I was in France to visit my daughter and her partner for my Grandson’s first birthday. Whilst my daughter and her partner don’t have very much money they wanted to give my grandson Zach a wonderful first birthday. They collected together the various gifts of money before taking him to the toy shop. They had seen a lovely toy car (similar to the one shown below) that Zach could sit on to push himself around. As soon as he saw the car in the shop his face lit up with excitement and he started to point to the car that he liked. We had one little excited boy on our hands and my daughter bought the car.

With the car purchased and gift wrapped by the shop, my daughter headed home and I went back to the hotel with my wife. Later we went to their flat in the hope of seeing Zach with his new car. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be. You see a friend had seen my daughter struggling home with shopping and stopped to give a lift. When they arrived home they unloaded the shopping and started to carry it into their flat. Struggling with a bulky pram, a child and shopping, they couldn’t carry everything at once so left some things outside. It was at this point that my grandson’s first birthday present went missing.

After a lot of hunting around they placed a notice on the entrance door to the flats in the hope that the person who took the present would see and return it. The letter was from Zach and simply read that he had lost his first birthday present and if someone had taken this for safe keeping could the let his daddy know as he wanted to play with it.

This morning the letter has gone. In its place was an anonymous reply wishing him a happy birthday and enclosing 50 Euros. It went on to say that if he didn’t find his car they hoped this would help him to replace it

The generosity of people never fails to amaze me.