I was a single dad raising my daughter beginning in infancy. For her sixteenth birthday I told her there would be no store bought gift - I was making her something. I took my sixteen favorite memories from her earliest years - before she would remember, and I wrote sixteen short stories about them.

At sixteen, she thanked me with a bit of reserve at this strange gift. But now, going on ten years later, they are treasured heirlooms she breaks out every year to re-read and looks forward to passing on to my grandchildren. And yes, she's already begun writing her own stories for their sixteenth birthday.