Memories of a Timeless Birthday Card

Do you have a birthday card from your youth that's been tucked away for years, but you think of it now and then, remembering that time when you received it? I do and it's the one pictured here. It is one of the very few that I, not my mama, kept stored safely away. It has moved to new homes with me, once with my parents and three times since I married. Sometimes I forget just where I store it, but eventually it comes to the light of day when I do major cleaning, or just decide to see what's stored in this box or that drawer. More often, it comes up in my memory because I have always just loved this card.

I cannot remember for certain what age I was when this card came to me, but I was probably 10 years old, maybe a little younger, and that would make this card date from about 1957-1959. My Granny and Aunt (Daddy's mother & sister) sent it to me. My Granny couldn't sign it herself, she was partially paralyzed from a stroke, so my Aunt Lib signed the card for both of them. I loved my Granny, she was the only one I had as Mama's mother had died years before I was born.

YEARS and YEARS passed....I'm not telling how many exactly! (Though I am sure it isn't hard to figure by what I write in this post!) One day last year, I was in a CVS to buy a card to send to a friend, when something caught my eye....a NEW card that looked like the one sent by my Granny and Aunt all those years ago. I had to have it to compare to the card I had stored away. So home it came with me and into a drawer where I store other cards & would remember it's location the next time my "vintage" card showed up.....and that was today, so here are my two cards!!

On the left is the birthday card sent to me by my Granny & Aunt Lib when I was a young girl and, as I said, I'm guessing it was sometime in the late 1950s. I thought it was the prettiest card I had ever seen back then and I think I still do. On the right is the similar card I found in 2010. The colors are slightly different and the new card is much larger.

This is the inside of the 1950s era card. This card measures about 4 1/2 inches wide and 5 1/4 inches tall when closed, so opened like this it is about 9 inches wide. In this vintage card, the "pink girl" is on the left and the "green girl" is on the right. You can see where Aunt Lib has signed the card on the green skirt on the right.

This is the inside of the card I found in 2010. It measures 4 1/2 inches wide and 7 1/4 inches tall when closed, so the width when opened is the same 9 inches as the vintage card, but it is 2 inches taller. You can see the verse on both cards is the same, but the "pink girl" and the "green girl" are on opposite sides on this 2010 card than on the 1950s one.

On the left is the card from the 1950s, which says it is "A Forget-Me-Not Card", made in Cleveland, U.S.A., and the cost was 5 cents. On the right is the 2010 card, which is an American Greetings card, also made in Cleveland, Ohio. The cost of this new card, some 50 odd years later was $2.79. On this new card is this statement: "Written and designed by our founder, Irving Stone, this card has been an American Greetings classic since it was first published in 1932." So it seems that the "Forget-Me-Not" card company was a forerunner of today's American Greetings card company. I also have to say that Mr. Irving Stone must have been quite a man and I like his style.

The new card is still a pretty card, but my old, yellowed card from Granny & Aunt Lib is "prettier" in more ways because of who sent it and what it means to me. Time to tuck away my "vintage" card for safekeeping, but I'll store the new card with it "just because".