Dear Atria,

Planting a few seeds and watching them sprout and grow into a plant is an experience that can't be justly described in a few words, the best way to comprehend the feeling is to experience it. Your birthday card this year gives you the opportunity to do so, should you wish to.

This year I decided to enclose a cheque, so you can either buy yourself a present you like, or save it to contribute towards something bigger you perhaps have been saving for.

I also bought a notebook for you with the hope you may find it useful. With our busy lives and so many things to remember it can be used for organising events in our life or gathering your thoughts.

Happy Birthday!

Your Dad Farshid

Dear Atria,

Your grandfather has chosen a bracelet and a charm from Pandora UK (the second photograph is from their website - copyright to Pandora) for your 18th Birthday, and have emailed me a scan of the message he wanted me to print and attach to the card he selected. As he is self-isolating in his house in the USA, he arranged for the card and the present to be delivered to me and he asked me to print his note, package everything together and mail to you. Hope you will enjoy his gift.

Dear Atria,

Wishing you love and togetherness this holiday and always. Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

This year I chose for you a wintery and sparkly Cinderella's Wish Charm to remind you that life is full of magic and you are a Princess. I am also sending Mrs Mouse - a little 'friend' and companion for you, filled with love and lots of luck.

Your dad Farshid

Dear Atria,
​
I hope your day is filled with wonderful things. Wishing you a very Happy Birthday.

This year I chose for you something to help you celebrate unforgettable moments, express your individuality and aspire to be better. I hope it will be the start of your own collection of charms celebrating many wonderful life events, experiences and people who love you. The first charm for your bracelet is a reminder that you are and you always will be my daughter, I am your dad and I love you.

I saw that you already collected your gift from the post office in Woking on the 14th of June. I sent it a bit earlier to ensure it reaches you in time for your celebrations. I hope you like it. 
Happy Birthday Atria

Dear Atria,
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
I wish you a very happy Birthday.

Below there are pictures of your Christmas card and present which today at 12.51pm postman attempted to deliver unsuccessfully.
Go to Royal Mail website (Tracking number AF257623564GB) and rearrange a delivery or take the card they left at your address to the local sorting office and collect in person. I hope you get it before Christmas.
Wishing you and your family and friends a wonderful, magical Christmas filled with love, joy and happiness. 
Love from dad :-)
​

Dear Atria,

Your Birthday is approaching soon, so I sent you a card and a birthday gift. I am now in Iran, but I chose what I want to get for you and Anna did the shopping and posting on my behalf. The parcel for you was posted 5 days ago so you can receive it well in time before your Birthday. I hope you will find time to collect it from the Post Office before then. In the meantime I am going to describe the gifts I chose for you.

From the message on the card you already know what are the other gifts. The fist one is 'The Secret', a book (or rather audiobook in this case - I thought you could listen to it on your iPod I got you last year) by Rhonda Byrne. I didn't read or listen to it myself but I checked out the reviews and I thought it is a type of lecture that teaches a positive attitude towards life and conveys good values. 'The Secret' contains wisdom from modern-day teachers - men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. Rhonda Byrne explains that by controlling your thoughts and ensuring that they are of a positive nature, anything, in any aspect of life, is achievable. More specifically, The Secret explains the law of attraction meaning that like things attract, so positive thoughts can create positive outcomes while negative thoughts would create that negative reality.
The book goes on to apply the concept of positivity to health, relationships, abundance, thankfulness, and ultimately life. Indeed the point is to be happy now, feel good now. Joy, love, freedom, happiness, laughter. That’s what it is. That's what I wish you in life. I hope you will enjoy listening to this book and maybe you could tell me about it more?

The secod gift is a book by Lois Blyth called 'The Little Pocket Book of Happiness' which explains how to love life, laugh more and live longer. It's a nice little book packed with great advice, powerful quotations and cute illustrations. I wish you all the happiness in the world and I hope this book will help you to find it.
The review of the book says:
The Little Pocket Book of Happiness offers a more joyous approach to living and thinking; a shift in approach that may reframe your view of the world; simple things you can do to reconsider your life consciously so that you can decide whether now is the time when you can be happier. It includes strategies to warm the heart and open the mind to the extraordinary power of happiness. It shares the experiences of others and provides the closest we might have to a happiness 'formula'. The good news is, happiness is within everyone's grasp.
Below are some picture from the inside of the book so you can have a feel what it is about. I myself saw only the pictures but based on them I really like the book and I hope you will like it too and that it will help you to find more happiness, joy, laughter and love in your life.

And here are all the presents before wrapping and then wrapped. There are also two pairs of socks that Anna thought are very cute and girly, so I hope you will like them. Happy Birthday my Princess! I hope you will have a wonderful day on your Birthday celebrating with friends and family.

Dear Atria,
Today the Birthday present I had for you was passed on to your Mum. Your Mum said that you are in Canada now so I guess you will receive it after you are back. I hope you will like it.
Have a lovely holidays. I've never been to Canada but everyone says it is a very beautiful country, so I hope you're having a wonderful time and will come back with plenty of good memories and experiences.

Dear Atria,
Your grandparents sent you a Christmas card and Christmas wishes.
As they can't sent it to you directly, they have posted it to me, I have taken a picture of the card and their wishes and am putting it below for you to see.
Have a very Merry Christmas

One that I favour to quote is that :- 
"The first person to bring a Christmas Tree into a house, in the way we know it today, may have been the 16th century German preacher Martin Luther. A story is told that, one night before Christmas, he was walking through the forest and looked up to see the stars shining through the tree branches. It was so beautiful, that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas".

One of the main reasons we have the custom of giving and receiving presents at Christmas, is to remind us of the presents given to newborn baby Jesus by the Wise Men: Frankincense, Gold and Myrrh.

• Frankincense was a perfume used in Jewish worship and, as a gift, it showed that people would worship Jesus.
• Gold was associated with Kings and Christians believe that Jesus is the King of Kings.
• Myrrh was a perfume that was put on dead bodies to make them smell nice and, as a gift, it showed that Jesus would suffer and die.

Christmas itself is really about a big present that God gave the world about 2000 years ago - Jesus! One of the most famous Bible verses, John 3:16, says: 'God loved the world so much, that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life.'.
But still all over the world, families and friends give presents to each other. It is an occasion to treat your loved ones. I bought you couple of present as well and I hope you will like them.

My darling angel, I wish you a  very happy birthday. 

I may not be there to celebrate and share these precious moments of your life with you, but my heart and my thoughts are always with you.

This birthday is to your dad different from all the previous ones, couple of days ago I visited a dear friend (Rahman) whose daughter is only a few month older than you. My vision of you my darling all these years remained as the same little girl as you were when I last saw you. That now have changed, you are no longer the little girl, but a young princess.

I was so glad when I realised how much you must have grown up, and at the same time so sad that I was not allowed to be a part of your life during the transition from childhood to adulthood.

I look forward to the day that you decide for yourself you want your dad to be part of your life again.

No matter how hard and for how long one tries to convince an eagle that she can not fly, eventually the day will come when the eagle comprehends that she is not destined to crawl on the earth and she shall embarks on the journey of life seeking to find the truth for herself.

The eagle will leave her cage and fly to the highest point in sky, then she will look down upon those who were trying to convince her she can not fly, and shall fly through the sky's in seek of the truth and her origins. 

The eagle will persevere her search until she finds the truth for herself and then demands to know why the truth was kept from her for all these years.

Happy Birthday My Darling Atria, I can not even send you a card or a present, but can express my feelings for you.

Your father
Farshid Shenassa
25/06/2012

Dear Atria, I wish you a very happy Nowruz. This Nowruz was even more special for us as Baba your grand dad was with us. He made brought all the things needed for Haft-Sin with him from Iran and prepared our Haft-Sin. Dear Atria, I can not give you materialistic gifts, the gift I can give you is the gift of knowledge which is more valuable and lasts for ever.

nowruz (meaning New Day) is one of the biggest and most celebrated zoroastrian festivals which has been celebrated since over 2500 years ago by Iranian Zoroastrians and many others.

Zoroastrians have a festival to mark the beginning of each of the four season, however, Nowruz is special as it also marks the start of spring when the day and the night equals and life on earth is reborn after winter as well as marking the beginning of the new agricultural year and the start of a new Iranian calendar year.

At Nowruz traditianally Zorastrians make a simbolic table with seven items all starting with persian letter "Shin", after Islam came to Iran this changed to seven seven items starting with letter "Sin" as there is no "Shin" in Arabic alphabet. The most common Hafr-Sin is;

Sabzeh, which is wheat grown in a plate as the simbol of Rebirth
Sir (Garlic) to represent medicine and healing
Somagh (is a dried grated fruit) to represent Sun and Sunrise
Senjed (is a dried fruit) simbolising "Love"
Serkeh (Vinigar) to represent "Old Age"
Sib (Apple) as a simbol of "Purity, Health & Beauty"
Samanu (cooked from Wheat) simbolizing "Wealth"

In addition there are other items on the table each of which symbolizes something sacred. These traditionally are; 

Mirror as a symbol of Sky and Light, 
Rose Water "Golab" to symbolize Water, Purity & Fresh Smell, 
Oil Burner or Candle to represent Fire,
Red Fish or Goldfish to symbolize animals,
Pomegranate to symbolize the Earth,
Eggs (usually painted with "Henna") to represent Fertility

Customarily people spend the new year in their own home, and then for the following 13-days they visit and greet each other, starting with youngers visiting the elders. On the therteenth day it is believed to be unlucky to visit anyone, everybody leave their house and go out for a picnic taking the "Sabzeh" they grew for the Haft-Sin, which they will trow away before returning.
This is the end of the celebration and the Haf-Sin will be cleared away.