If a picture is worth a thousand words, memorabilia is worth a million.

This birchbark birthday card is a great example. It’s from me to my biggest sister, Aileen, when I was eight and she was twenty-one.

It is me stopped in time and a few facts become clear:

I was a terrible speller

I knew the power of flattery

I had no spatial awareness

It’s written on birchbark not for a lack of paper, but I was mimicking our father. Dad was a hobby-artist and created masterpieces on birchbark, gathered from the acres of woods around our family cottage. As well as saying “I love you” to Aileen, unknowingly I was saying “I love you” to Dad by emulating him.

I get great joy from bringing my clients’ memorabilia out of their shoeboxes into the light of day and ultimately into their books, illustrating their stories. Their precious artefacts help me to drill down to their essence. They help me to find out what makes them tick, what is important to them and what makes them, them.

The proofreaders among you may notice my name is spelled wrong in Aileen’s caption. My full first name is Jacqueline and I changed the spelling of my everyday name from Jackie to Jacquie when I was fourteen because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a boy. At the time I adored the author Gerald Durrell, so I copied his wife’s spelling of Jacquie.

This birchbark birthday card has 999,514 more words behind it, but I won’t keep you now!