The year I spoke through greeting cards

I didn't have the words yet, so clipart angels said it for me.

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

We had a family computer: chunky, a little slow, and 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.

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 for no reason at all. If I had a feeling that felt too big to just say to someone’s face, I’d fold it into a card instead.

I’d pick a slightly romantic font, drop in a clipart rose, and write something between a poem and a sincere wish. Then I’d print it, fold it carefully, and hand it to someone at school, the same way you’d pass a note in class.

To me, it was just as simple as that.

I wasn’t always good at saying things directly. I was sensitive, observant, already holding more feeling than a small town really knew what to do with. But in a card, I could make it beautiful, soften it, or turn it all the way up, and hand someone a piece of paper that said more than I ever managed in person.

Sometimes people were touched, sometimes just confused. Either way, I kept going.

No one had taught me how to do this; it wasn’t a school project, and none of my friends were doing it. It was just me, sitting in front of that glowing screen, putting my whole heart into a card, for my own satisfaction, and hopefully someone else's too.

Looking back, I think that was my first real design practice, years before I would have called it that. And underneath all of it: love.

Not romantic love (though I’m sure a crush or two received an anonymous angel-print message). It was closer to wanting someone to know I’d noticed them. I didn’t know how to say “you matter to me” without wrapping it in flourishes and sparkles first.

We didn’t have Instagram stories or 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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