It’s Week 29 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge and the theme is Birthdays.
Although Nana Connie visited her siblings and mother in Canada as much as she could and they made trips to visit her in Maine, they didn’t see each other nearly enough and she missed them. She felt this most acutely during holidays, birthdays, and important milestones like weddings and retirements because it was impossible for one side or the other to always make the five-hour drive. To show they cared and were “there” even when they physically couldn’t be there required creativity. Fortunately, creativity was never a problem for the Meloche family!
The Meloches love to laugh and enjoy family get-togethers. Any excuse for a party! At some point someone – either one of the Canadian Meloches or Nana – realized it wasn’t strictly necessary to have the person we’re celebrating at the party in order to have a party. I’d like to think our family was way ahead of its time. During the pandemic, celebrating with family and friends through Skype was a common occurrence, but back when video calls were still the far-off futuristic fantasy of movies and television, the Meloches used what they had at their disposal: snail mail and photographs.
As far as I can tell, the first photographic evidence of these long-distance parties began in 1980 and started either with Nana’s 53rd birthday or her brother-in-law Gerry Ryan’s retirement party.
The pictures of my grandmother's birthday celebration are epic! The sender captioned each one. This one is called “Before the Drinks.”
Followed, of course, by “After the Drinks.”
They shared a yummy-looking meal.
But I guess there wasn’t enough room for everyone to eat around the big table. Aunt Frances and Uncle Gerry were stuck at a card table. The picture is labeled, “The Urchins in Their Corner.”
And naturally no birthday party is complete without cake, though something tells me they added the phallic decorations.
Again, I’m not sure if the birthday party came before or after the retirement party, but we had a long-distance retirement party for Uncle Gerry and sent him the pictures. This is before we cut the cake. Notice my Uncle Marty is flipping the bird. We call that “the family salute.”
This is after we cut the cake. I showed my daughter the picture and she said, “They let little-you hold a knife? That’s a questionable choice.” Indeed! What was my mother thinking? I like the red eyes in this picture. I look like a demon.
In 1984 we got our first video camera (hulking, clunky thing that it was) and started mailing video tapes to Aunt Frances and Uncle Gerry after every Christmas. Our family always did something goofy at the end. One Christmas, everyone wore those glasses/noses/mustache disguises sold around Halloween because my Uncle Steve looks like that in real life. They yelled, “Will the real Steve please stand up?” Everyone else crouched down while Uncle Steve was left standing. Another year they turned the camera upside down at the end of the video and had a “Dancing on the Ceiling” party. Yes, it was all very silly, but it was our way of sharing holidays from afar.
Love it! Thanks for sharing.