Lost Letters: Introduction

Dear Compass,

Before I left England for here (and where 'here' is is for me to know and your mother to fret over), I had a quick rummage round and found a box of letters I'd written to you but never mailed. They date back to around the time of your birth and run up nearly to the present. With some sizeable gaps, I'll admit. I would claim the gaps are the result of despair over ever finding you again, but more accurately I got lazy. It's difficult to keep writing without hope of response -- rather like talking to God, I suppose. I keep sending my pleas and prayers out into the ether, and they keep being ignored or at least unanswered. So I offer you this virgin sacrifice: the unread letters, father to daughter, of the past 39 years.