Birthday Cards from Years Past

I've been sorting through the boxes of stuff I took from Zoe's closet and thrown into the spare room upstairs.  It's a little bit like Andy Warhol's time capsules.  I never know what I'm going to find in those pack-ratty boxes!

Yesterday, I found my scrapbook of birthday and holiday cards from when I was a toddler.  Mom gave me the album before I had Zoe, and I looked through it then, and then put it in a box for safekeeping.  I was so happy to find it today!  Talk about a time capsule!

Not only are the cards themselves like looking into the past, design-wise, but they're like hearing the voices of people who are gone now, like Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, Grandma Evans, Great-Gramma Whitmire.  On another day, looking through my scrapbook of birthday cards from over thirty years ago would be bittersweet.  Today, it's just fun, especially because I'm also sitting here, looking at the stack of birthday cards Zoe received for her first birthday, and I have a pink scrapbook I bought and haven't really known what to do with.  This is perfect!

Neat handwriting from Adeline

Grandma Jeanette's handwriting

I love looking at the handwriting.  I'm sure I look at today's handwriting (especially my own!) with a jaundiced eye, and figure all-around our handwriting today is messier than people's writing was, thirty years ago, but I'm sure that back then it was just the same as today.  I think we all tend to be a little more meticulous with our handwritten messages when they go on a card.  Still, though, we wrote with pens a lot more back then than we do today, and it shows.

 Some of the cards, I don't really remember very well, but there are others that I do remember vividly.  I remember this card to the left, with the little girl and the pink gingham background, because it always fascinated me, the way her head or her hair came to a point on the back of her head.   And I remember the card on the right because the little doll's legs were a wheel that turned, making her look like she was walking.  I must have been two when I got that card.

 I vividly remember getting the Halloween card on the far left.  It was from Almyra Lovell, a friend of my parents'.  She lived in the trailer court in Wellsville, by the railroad tracks and near where WJQZ is today.  I remember visiting Almyra at her trailer a few times when we'd make a trip to Town to shop at Giant or Bells. The card has a scarecrow on it, and even though I was just 2 when I got that card, that scarecrow with his friendly crow friends have always been what come to mind when I think of Halloween.

The Christmas card with the little girl with the red pigtails, canopy bed, and colorful quilt is from my parents for Christmas that same year, when I was two.  That card has has stuck with me over the years because I always wanted a canopy bed, but our trailer and house were always too small for canopy beds.  And I wanted my hair with bangs and pigtails!  My hair was always in a pixie-cut, for ease of styling and for minimum brushing meltdowns due to tangles.

Valentine's Day, 1982, From Great-Grandma Wynick

Other cards are special because the people who wrote them are gone, and seeing their handwriting brings them back to me.  Great Grandma Wynick, for instance.  I'd recognize her handwriting anywhere.  She wrote with felt-tip pens a lot, and even when she wrote in ballpoint, she pressed down into the paper hard.  

Then there's Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al.  I spent a lot of time at their trailer when I was a pre-schooler.  It was there that I got to watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.  We didn't get PBS at our place until almost right before I went to kindergarten, so up to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al's it was a treat to get to see Grover and Oscar and Bert'n'Ernie.  Their place always smelled like Newport News menthols, Skoal, pipe tobacco, and lemon air freshener.  They had air conditioning in the summer, and in the winter, Aunt Flossie always let me sit on the heating vent!  I never got away with sitting right on the heating vent at home!  Plus, they always had those little cookies that come in strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, with the thin layer of frosting between two styrofoam-like wafers, and I loved those!  And Aunt Flossie made me my first ice cream soda, with vanilla ice cream and 7-up.  There's more to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, but that's all for another day.  Today, I'm talking about my cards.

Birthday Four was apparently a big one.  I remember Grandpy and Grandma got me my red Radio Flyer wagon.  Mom and Dad got me my blue "Bop-Ball," which is what I called my "hippity-hoppity." Looking back, that Bop-Ball was a great thigh, glute, calf, and hammie workout.  Does anybody know if they make those in big-people size?

Raggedy Ann was big for me that year.  I had a Raggedy Ann cake.  I remember it because first of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did I!  And second of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did the Raggedy Ann on my cake.

Do you remember what red food color used to taste like, back in the 70s and 80s?  It tasted like gawdawful, is how it tasted!  It's a little better now, but not much.  In 1982, I remember I wanted a BIG piece of cake with the red icing, and my tongue turned inside-out from that bitter red food color!

Handwritten Birthday Wishes from Cousin Theresa

My sister got a Raggedy Ann birthday cake once, too.  Mom had the special pan that's all molded to Raggedy-Ann shape and all.  But Colleen's Raggedy Ann birthday cake had yellow hair.  At the time, Mom said it was because Colleen was blonde.  I think we all know that Mom was just trying to save us all from the mind-numbingly awful red food colored icing.  And I for one, appreciate it!

The card that makes me laugh the hardest, though, is from my Cousin Theresa, whom I've always looked up to.  She wrote me a card on a flap of wrapping paper, in her beautiful handwriting.

This card bears typing out for you.  It says:
Dear April,
Hi!
You're 4 years old & you'll soon be starting school!  You'll enjoy it, though, believe me!  Your favorite year will be your sophomore I guarantee!
Well, you have a nice birthday!
Love Theresa

Theresa would have been a sophomore in high school that year, so apparently, she was happy with school that year.  And what makes me really, really laugh is that sophomore year WAS my best year in high school, the year I came closest to being a Cool Kid, plus it was the year I had the best hair of my entire high school career.  I really had those crispy bangs down pat by then.  1993-94 was really the last year when it was acceptable to have big hair in the 1990s.

I have all the cards Zoe's received in her whole life, and I'm going to make her an album like this so 34 years in the future, she can leaf through it and smile, too!