Look What Came in the Mail!

Miss Anna wrote to Malia Obama to express her fascination that they share the same birthday -- July 4th.  It has seemed no small thing that the current White House granted the permission for Anna and Jameson's specific flight of children to enter legally the United States following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and that Anna (and the president's daughter) were born on the day of U.S. Independence is only the start of commonality.  Anna had been fascinated by Chicago ever since her time living in the group home in Pittsburgh, as she found super cool the preteen show "Shake it Up, Chicago," and has loved every trip we've now taken together into that fabulous city -- the hometown of the First Family.  That the reply was, of course, not a personal script from Malia appeared unsurprising to Anna, and she was all smiles simply to receive in the mail a letter addressed to her on White House stationary inside an envelope with the return address seen above.  There are these moments when one can relish living in a democratic republic and have that rare reminder that there are times that we do, indeed, have a voice.  Someone (even if not the specific, famous recipient) reads our words, and a response (even if simple) is given to us.  This tiny thing seemed to give to Anna a sense of personal empowerment -- a point of arrival for a young lady who is yet processing through the citizenship bureaucracy.  We're not always exactly just a number.  She is Anna, and somebody on the White House staff knows it.