The year I spoke through greeting cards

When I couldn’t say it out loud, I let clipart and angels do the talking.

There was one year—1998—when I said almost everything I needed to say through greeting cards.

We had a family computer. A chunky, humming gateway to something beyond Lagoa Dourada. But access to it came with rules. My dad, always practical and slightly suspicious of anything that didn’t involve a textbook, made sure we didn’t spend too much time on it. Electricity wasn’t cheap. And computers, in his eyes, weren’t for playing: they were for printing reports and doing research, preferably about biology or history.

But every now and then, I got my window.
And when I did, I opened Microsoft Word and made magic.

I made cards.

Page after page of pastel gradients, swirling WordArt, angels with pixelated wings, hearts, sparkles, prayers. Some were for birthdays. Others for encouragement. A few were just because. If I had a feeling I couldn’t say out loud (and back then, I had so many), I would channel it into a card.

I’d pick a slightly romantic font, drop in a clipart rose, and write something between a poem and a benediction. Then I’d print it, fold it carefully, and hand it to someone at school as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

And for me, it was.

I couldn’t always say what I felt out loud. I was sensitive, observant, already holding more emotion than a small town really knew what to do with. But in a card, I could make it beautiful. I could soften the feeling. Or amplify it. I could give someone something they didn’t expect, but maybe needed.

Sometimes people were touched.
Sometimes they were confused.
But either way, I kept going.

No one had taught me how to make cards. It wasn’t part of any school project. It wasn’t something my friends were doing. It was just me, sitting in front of that glowing screen, trying to translate whatever I was feeling into something someone else could hold in their hands.

And looking back, I realize, it was design.
It was language.
It was emotional strategy.

And maybe it was a little bit of love.

Not romantic love (though I’m sure a crush or two received an anonymous angel-print message). But that feeling of just wanting to connect. I didn’t quite know how to say “you matter to me” without wrapping it in flourishes and sparkles.

We didn’t have Instagram stories.
We didn’t have Canva.

We had Word.
Clipart.
And time.

And for one year, that was enough.

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✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.

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