The Postcards I Once Rolled My Eyes At

- The postcards, now framed and treasured means heartfelt words endure far longer than material gifts, becoming their most cherished possession

Every birthday, without fail, my grandmother would hand me a single old postcard. No ribbon, no card stuffed with money, no exciting new toy just a plain, often vintage postcard with a scenic view on one side and her brief message on the other. As a child and later as a teenager, I accepted it with thinly veiled disappointment: a quick frown, an eye roll, and a mumbled thank-you. It felt like the smallest possible gesture, something chosen more out of obligation than genuine thought.

She passed away when I was seventeen. In the years that followed, life swept me forward school, work, relationships and those postcards slipped quietly from my memory. They became just another relic of childhood, insignificant compared to the louder, flashier gifts I’d received from others.

Two decades later, at thirty-seven, I returned to my childhood home to help clear it out. Up in the attic, behind stacks of forgotten boxes, I spotted a dusty glass jar. Inside were exactly seventeen postcards, one for each birthday she had shared with me. My curiosity piqued, I pulled one out and flipped it over and everything changed.

The back held not a generic greeting but a short, handwritten poem crafted entirely for me. It brimmed with precise, intimate details from that year: a small victory I’d celebrated, a quirky phrase I’d repeated endlessly, a moment of stubbornness she’d observed with quiet affection. Some lines glowed with pride; others carried gentle advice clearly meant for the future self she wouldn’t live to meet. Each postcard was a love letter in miniature, preserved with extraordinary care.

I took the jar home that day and later framed the postcards together. They now hang on my wall, where I see them every morning a daily reminder that the gifts we once dismiss as meager can prove to be the most enduring. Material things fade or disappear, but words poured from the heart, written by hand with intention, outlast time itself. What I once saw as the least valuable present has become my most treasured possession.