I bought a card the next day. Pink, with a white rabbit on the front. I sat at the kitchen table while Hannah was at school and wrote inside it.
I didn’t use my own handwriting. I practiced for an hour on scrap paper until I had something different. Rounder. Loopier. More like a young woman’s handwriting.
“Happy birthday, my sweet girl. I’m sorry this card is late. I think about you every single day. I hope you had the best day ever. You are so loved. Love always, Mom.”
And then, in the bottom corner, without even thinking about it, I drew a little flower.
A violet.
I’ve drawn violets my whole life. My mother taught me when I was little. She grew them in pots on every windowsill in our house, and she embroidered them on everything. Pillowcases. Dish towels. Handkerchiefs. When she died, I kept her sewing basket, and I kept embroidering violets the way she taught me. Three petals up. Two petals down. A little curl at the bottom of the stem.
I didn’t realize I’d drawn it until it was done.
I almost started over. Then I didn’t. It was just a little flower. Nobody would ever notice.
I mailed the card to my sister Denise in Tucson. I put a little note inside the envelope. “Please mail this as soon as you get it. Don’t ask questions. I’ll explain later.” Denise mailed it the next morning. She didn’t ask questions. She never has.
Five days later, Hannah came running into the kitchen so fast she slid on the floor in her socks.
“Laura! Laura! It came! It came!”
She was holding the pink envelope over her head like a trophy. Her face was glowing.
“My mom sent me a card! She didn’t forget! She just sent it late!”
I put down the dish towel I was holding. I made myself smile.
“Oh, honey,” I said. “That’s wonderful.”
She read it out loud to me three times. Then she read it to Mark. Then she read it to Mr. Hops. Then she took it upstairs and slept with it under her pillow.
I went into the laundry room, shut the door, and cried into a pile of clean towels.
I did it every year after that.
For eleven years.
Every birthday. Every Christmas. A card would arrive with a Tucson postmark, written in that round, loopy handwriting. Signed “Love always, Mom.” And always, always, in the bottom corner, a little violet.
When Hannah turned ten, the card said, “I’m so proud of you for making the honor roll.” When she turned thirteen, it said, “You’re a teenager now! I hope you know you can always be yourself.” When she was sixteen, it said, “Drive safe, my beautiful girl.”
Mark used to tell me what to write. Little things Hannah had done that year. Things she would want her mother to know about. He’d lie next to me in bed and whisper, “Say something about her science fair project. She worked so hard on it.”
Denise mailed every single one. In eleven years, she never once asked me why.
I stopped when Hannah turned eighteen. I told myself she was an adult now. She was old enough to understand that sometimes parents just don’t show up. I couldn’t keep pretending forever.
On her eighteenth birthday, there was no card.
Hannah didn’t say anything about it. She didn’t wait by the mailbox anymore. She was getting ready to leave for college. She acted like it didn’t matter.
But that night, I walked past her room and saw her sitting on her bed, holding the shoebox where she kept all those cards. Reading them, one by one.
I almost went in. I almost told her everything.
But I didn’t.
The cards weren’t for me. They were never for me. They were for her.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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