My Aunt Elaine celebrates her birthday this coming week.
Not sure what she’ll do to mark the occasion. But when she lived with my grandparents at 1107 Hope Street, she needed go no further than the calendar for a reminder of the big day.
Throughout her youth, my grandfather would mark each one of her birthdays with a special drawing of some sort.
He never did that for my dad, as far as I know. Maybe that’s because my dad — who is several years older than my aunt — was on his way off to college during the period for which we have calendars. Or maybe a lanky, sax-playing engineering student just didn’t make for good caricaturing.
But my grandpa does not seem to have missed a year without some sort of special drawing for my aunt’s birthday.
It’s kinda sweet to look at them all now, like a sort of annual father-daughter dance. Puckishness and creativity are two of my family’s more endearing traits … and what we have here is my grandpa harnessing his puckishness and his artistic creativity to express his love.
We’ll present a couple birthday drawings today, and a couple tomorrow. Happy birthday, Aunt Elaine.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
More to come tomorrow.
Hope Street 
Thank you for the tribute! I had forgotten all about those pictures! Also, thank you for your professionalism in not revealing my age. It would not have occurred to me that someone would actually do the math to figure out my current age, however. So, if it benefits your blogs in any way, it is OK to post material or comments that would reveal my senior status in years. BTW, it probably provided an outlet for Drawing Boy to draw caricatures of an adolescent girl, as he was more familiar with adolescent boy (ie your dad & himself) issues. I don’t think Drawing Boy ever got over such things as my setting my short hair with beer in rollers ! Happy Birthday to Cole on our shared birthday, as well!
You’re welcome. Tune in tomorrow for a couple more pictures.
Yes, I consciously tried to be sure your age was not included, as a lady’s age is no business but her own.
What does beer do for hair?
As I was always looking for ways to combat my curly hair, I would set it with large rollers and beer. The beer acted as a super strong setting lotion. ( I suppose if the hair came out awful, I could have consumed the beer, but that didn’t occur to me then).
[…] next day’s entry features “Elaine’s Birthday” … and, as we’ve previously mentioned here, my Aunt Elaine’s birthday falls in the first week of January. So that locks in the date […]