From the author: I was sorting through my notes and found a letter that I wrote to my best friend’s daughter a year ago. This is a congratulations on your 18th birthday. A friend (lives in Germany) came up with the idea of ​​giving her daughter an album with wishes from acquaintances, relatives, and friends. Why did I decide to publish it here? I think you can guess. Nastya, Nastya, Nastenka! Can you imagine that I remember the day when, opening a letter from your mother, I took out from the envelope a Polaroid photo of a baby girl with the inscription “Anastasia”? Believe me, I don’t remember many moments of my early youth as vividly as this one. I remember how happy I was. I remember looking at the photo and couldn’t take my eyes off. I remember that I put it on the closet shelf and did not put it away in the album for a long time. “Girl,” I thought, “wow, it’s a girl!” What will it be like? Your birthday was the happiest day for your parents, so happy that this joy spread far beyond the borders of the country in which you were born. I often think about how much extra color there would be in my life if you lived nearby. I would really like to communicate with you more often. I am interested in your opinion, your thoughts, your hobbies, plans, dreams. You know, a certain Harry Brown (American politician and investor) wrote a letter to his daughter, the main idea of ​​which was: no one owes you anything. Unexpectedly, he opened this phrase from a very positive side: “no one is obliged to love you. If someone loves you, it means there is something special about you that makes them happy. When people do something for you, it's only because they want to do it themselves. Because there is something about you that is important to them - something that makes them want to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it's not out of a sense of duty." I’m glad that today, Nastenka, I have a reason to tell you: in those moments when we manage to communicate, I am happy. I think about you much more than you can imagine (someday I will tell you this secret J) I can imagine how many kind words, memories, wishes will be collected in this album today. And the adults will probably give parting words. You are at a wonderful age: you have a lot of acquaintances ahead - with people, with new sensations and impressions, with life, with feelings, with trials, with yourself. It’s hard to resist “admonishing” something. The most important thing that adults understood in life, they have always tried to pass on to their children. Charlie Chaplin wrote to his daughter: I was not an angel, but I always strived to be a man. Try too. Dear Nastya, - Scott Fitzgerald would say, - those moments when you will be choked by despair, when it seems to you that you are not succeeding and that it is impossible to do anything, know: only in such moments do you truly move forward. And psychologist Kelly Flanagan wrote in a letter to his little daughter: Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. Sergei Yesenin turned his mother's letter into poetry. “Our hopes in you did not come true, And my soul is so painful and bitter that my father had a vain thought, So that you would take more money for poetry.” This happens. I hope you smiled. And yet, despite the fact that our parents sometimes advise us, as it seems to us, incomprehensible things, I would like to give you the words of the actor Evgeny Leonov. He wrote to his son: Is there a person in your life in front of whom you are not afraid to be small, stupid, unarmed, in all the nakedness of your revelation? This person is your protection. Happy birthday to you, Anastasia! Happiness, health, success in your studies! New discoveries! Boyish eyes in love with you! And one more thing: these words are unlikely to be said to you today, because you are already an adult, but I’ll probably say: listen to your mother. Don’t listen, but rather, try to hear. This is a very adult skill: to be able to.