My Mother's Birthday Cards

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I used to make my mother a card for her birthday, and when I was younger, also for any other special occasions during the year. She loved them, they made her so happy and she made her appreciation so apparent that it always made it worth it! The whole room lit up when she smiled with her sparkling green eyes. She left last year (by left, I mean to the place from which one never returns…) and so, as I now go through her things - a task I find so very hard, and yet in other ways rewarding, I keep finding these cards which she treasured, hidden between books on her shelves, or kept in special envelopes amongst other papers. I know they were very special to her and I loved making them. Somehow, perhaps because my father was a painter and a cartoonist, who made his own beautiful cards - I keep finding those too, I wanted to use my own medium with which to create mine. That medium became whatever I could find, mostly coloured paper and or coloured card, which I would cut into shapes with scissors, and in more recent years, a pair of Fiskar scissors with their vibrant orange handle! My mother was a writer, and I would often take inspiration from her passion for writing and literature for these cards and make some tiny little books with coloured paper on the outside and white paper on the inside that I would stitch on so that they could be little “3D” objects on the card. Sometimes I would make the little books in other shapes.

The other tradition was that I would always make them at the last minute. The very morning of her birthday, or sometimes the night before. And the inspiration would always come then, with the pressure of time, even if I had no idea what I was going to make. It was a risk of course, but somehow, I always had better ideas that way, rather than planning everything out. Some years I would try to think about it in advance and make sure that I had the necessary materials - that is, I would go to buy paper and card in different colours and make sure I had paper glue too, but other times I would just work with what I had there left over from other years. I loved this challenge! Very often, rather than drawing things first, I would use the scissors to create the shapes and cut them directly out of the paper and card. It was always fun to make these cards, always slightly daunting because of the timing, and equally a relief when I had completed the “oeuvre” just in time to be able to give it to my mother. One may wonder why I didn’t make these cards in advance, but in fact, the best inspiration often came at the last minute, and very specifically, while I was making the card itself. The time pressure I found would also focus my mind. I might start with one idea, but then realise that another idea was more interesting or worked better as I was making it. I could never have done any of this without a very good pair of scissors!

I have also made these cards for other people close to me, using whatever came into my mind, a couple of times a photograph of something (I am also a photographer) that I would cut out and use bits of to create a collage, recreating an image of something else out of abstract pieces of coloured paper. Now of course, if I wish to continue this tradition I will have to do this more and more for my friends, because this is the first year that both my mother and my father have gone (and I have inherited their scissors!). I remember feeling the slightest relief that I didn’t have to think of something to make last year - for the first birthday when my mother was no longer here, but of course, now I would do almost anything to have her back here with me and to see her beautiful green eyes and luminous face light up as I present her with her card. I miss her so much!