When it comes to other people’s celebrations - well, I can always find an appropriate greeting in the form of a card. Mr B believes that I alone am keeping the manufacturers of greetings cards - be they commemorating
births, marriages or deaths - in business. He is constantly exhorting me to cull my Birthday and Anniversary List to delete anybody who doesn’t remember our birthdays, let alone our anniversary but I am staunch in my own defence. When it comes
to birthdays - I’m a believer.
Which is currently giving me something of a headache as I plough through box upon box of mementoes which once resided in the
loft and now are spread out all over the house as I continue to sort the contents. If you think I am exaggerating (and, I admit, the Daily Blog does occasionally, shall we say, elaborate for effect) then you need to know that I appear to have saved every single
birthday and anniversary card I have been sent for the past fifty plus years. There are, literally, hundreds of them.
What to do? I mean, one of the reasons for
the Great Loft Clearance, apart from the imminent arrival of the LIT (Loft Insulation Team) is to ensure that Our Foursome aren’t faced with an impossible task when their father and I depart to the Ultimate Loft in the Sky. There is no way they would
want to be faced with an avalanche of birthday cards - and if they were, well, they would just be unceremoniously dumped wouldn’t they? The cards, I mean, not The Foursome, don’t be silly.
I have therefore decided upon a course of action which pays tribute to all those friends and family who cared enough to send us a card (or several) over the years but still disposes of the majority in the interests of recycling.
Hence I am reading every single card as if I have just received it in the post, paying due note to the kind sender, before deciding which of two piles it will join. The first, and largest, pile is sadly bound for the recycling bin - but only after I have thought
back on our connection with the sender. The second, smaller, pile is for cards which are special in some way, ones I will want The Foursome to read and enjoy the sentiments contained therein.
An example might be the very first card Mr B received from our eldest daughter who would have been just a few months old at the time. The picture on the front of the card, inexplicably, shows three pink elephants quaffing
wine at a bar. Inside, after the customary birthday greeting, I have written “from one heffalump lover to another.” What on earth is all that about? It’s a tantalising glimpse into the past but suggests a special connection between father
and baby daughter.
I haven’t been able to bring myself, either, to dispose of any homemade cards. One of my favourites is an Easter card designed
by Our Boy and addressed to the whole family “from your son or brother”! He always was careful with his time...
The more discerning among you will
probably have already spotted the problems which lie ahead of me. It is going to take me simply ages to read every single card. After all, I am struggling even to remember some of the senders from way back when - but once upon a time I must have meant
enough to them for them to choose, buy, write and post a card to wish me a happy birthday or anniversary, to celebrate the birth of one of my children, or to hope I get well soon from an illness I have long forgotten all about. All the cards must be read and
their senders acknowledged.
I owe them that much...