Dear Grandboy: I want you to know that my mother - your great-grandmother, whom your mother taught you to call "Great-grandmother Jean", truly thought you were the best kid on the planet. She liked your bright eyes and your smile and your enthusiasm and your singing voice. In her eyes, you could do no wrong.

I think about her a lot when holidays are coming, even if they are holidays created by merchandisers to sell more merchandise. My mother was an enthusiastic holiday celebrant. She never forgot to send cards and she never sent them late. I was cruising Valentine displays today, reminded again that I have no idea what entertains and/or pleases your fifteen year old self. I'm fairly certain you wouldn't get a kick out of a Barbie valentine or a Disney Princess valentine. You're clearly too old for Thomas Train. Candy is usually safe, but I don't even know whether you like chocolate.And your mother would throw it away, no doubt, as she has done with everything else that has been sent.

I'll probably do what I've done for the past several years: send e-tines to you and your brother. I know you delete them without opening them because I never get notice that the valentines have been received.If you sent me a valentine, I'd open it.

Although it's not very clear, I think you and I are estranged because your mother thinks I was critical of her at the time she and your father separated. She circulated an e-mail to your father's family members, including me, expressing her intention to make sure that we all remained in touch. Your grandmother Kay, the school teacher, wrote back, commenting that it had been her experience that the children of divorce coped much better when the parents worked cooperatively to ensure the children's safe passage. Since that had also been my experience, as a divorce attorney, I agreed with Kay, and expressed that to your mother. I have never heard from her directly since then. I did hear from your father, as did Kay, that what we had written had upset your mother and we were not to write to her again. So I haven't.