Witnessing Changing Times

One reason I've been remiss keeping up with Amusing Musings is that I'm in the midst of a big project that involves poring through (most interesting) items that have been stored for at least a twenty years. Like other mothers, mine saved every charming little thing from my earliest years, including nudie photos of me (oh, dear) in my first year, a lock from my first hair cut, and innocently sweet cards congratulating her and my father on my birth. Year 1-to-2 quickly filled and I graduated to another scrapbook full of my childish drawings, my first written "works," pre-school to first grade report cards, birthday cards from my Granny, and what seems like every valentine card exchanged at school. The old cards (and by old, I mean the first half of the 1950's) are wonderfully sweet and charming, so much nicer than most of what one sees today, with silly word-play guaranteed to please. Lovely as they are, I obviously haven't looked through them since they were pasted into the scrapbook, because today the following unaddressed, unsigned, multi-page card caught my eye for the first time in 60-plus years:

I think it's safe to say the card was not addressed to me, but surely from one parent to the other. From him to her or her to him, I can't now imagine (they divorced about 20 years later). Now, granted, my parents were pretty enlightened and calm about sex and sexuality in that time and place of social conservatism about such things. However, I'm at a complete loss as to why my mother (my father wasn't responsible for memorabilia-management, it would not have been in character) thought this would be cute to save for their little daughter's posterity. I like to think it was my mother's sense of humor, and that she had an inkling I would someday finally take notice, and most of all, get a really good laugh out of it.