"I was in the paper!" my 5-year-old nephew hollered as he came bounding up the stairs of my parents' home, through dad's office door, over the exercise bike, around a pile of shirts, and between my father's chair and mine. I was helping my dad add some addresses to his Yahoo email account; we stopped because some yahoos are more important than others. Adam's joy is clearly one of them.

"I was in the paper for my birthday!" he shouted. We looked at the paper. Yes, indeed: four years ago Adam was on the kid's page of the local paper in honor of his first birthday. Oh, look, Adam said, another story: on that same auspicious day, Adam received a free cake from Luigi's bakery in Bridgeport.

We read too slowly for him, so he recapped: "I was in the paper and I got a cake for my birthday!" We congratulated him as if it were yesterday. As if it were today. Then he said of my daughter: "Della was in the paper too for different things. Grandma showed me."

My mother saves stuff. "Every little paper they write on, I keep. Goes straight in the album," she told me when Adam released us and we went downstairs. Ah, yes, mother brings order even to this chaos.

Adam is important, beloved, wonderful. He, like his brother and my daughter, has the Midas touch of the grandchild. He knows this because every scribble "goes straight into the album."

I teach English, I write, and I edit for a living and for others for the joy of it. I marvel at written language, how little dots and squiggles capture thought and feeling--life itself. Writing is about inspiration, the breathing in of the Spirit. It's all sacred, somehow. These gifts are perfect when they come from the soul. People care very deeply about their words.

Adam's big news was four years old. Did it matter--especially considering the big story, the Truth, that he is beloved and beautiful, that he is sacred. It doesn't matter what year it is when he opens his arms wide for a hug, to love and be loved.