#32: Savoring the Years: A Birthday Journey Through Memory and Tradition

Every birthday holds a story, a slice of our personal history that weaves into the tapestry of who we are. Join me, Melissa Ann Kitchen, on a behind the scenes walk down memory lane, exploring the profound ways I've celebrated my special days and the rituals that bind me to my past. As I've faced birthdays without my parents, I've discovered the strength in savoring memories, from childhood parties to the cherished 'Van Choc Straw' ice cream tradition. This podcast is an invitation to reflect on your own past, to find joy in the photographs and mementos that tell your story, and to explore how we can bring these into our present celebrations.

The act of reminiscing is akin to time travel, a way to reconnect with old friends, and reignite the emotions that birthday celebrations evoke. I'll share the evolution of my birthdays, the rediscovery of Angel food cake with real whipped cream and strawberries, and the importance of preserving these narratives for generations. Whether it's recreating a treasured birthday traditions, or simply connecting to our memories of loved ones from the past, this episode is a testament to the power of our histories. I encourage you to document and celebrate your own traditions, ensuring that these precious moments remain a vibrant part of your legacy. So, let's get sentimental and find gratitude in the stories that shape us—it's not just a trip down memory lane, it's a journey that can enrich our present and brighten our future.

For more information on all of the items mentioned in this episode, head over to https://www.melissaannkitchen.com/blog

This group is for people who are in the process of writing their own personal stories to preserve their past for their future. It’s a place to come for story writing inspiration, weekly writing-related events and memes, and continued support from me and the other members.

Join like-minded people and get your stories down on paper for your future generations!

Transcript

Melissa: 0:01

Welcome to the Preserve your Past podcast, where we'll explore all things related to the creative process of writing your stories for future generations. I'm your host, melissa Ann Kitchum, author, teacher, speaker and coach. I believe that your personal history is a priceless gift for family, friends and generations to come, whether you consider yourself a writer or not. We are discussing the topics that help you with every step of the process, like how to mine for the juiciest story ideas or how to refine them into polished final drafts you'll be proud to share. Let's face it sure, your stories can be overwhelming, but I've got you covered. We all have a lifetime of memories to share, so why not save yours to pass along? Let me help you leave your lasting legacy.

Melissa: 1:04

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Preserve your Past podcast. This is Melissa, your host, and this week's episode is going to be a bit of a different format. I am going to be giving you a look of a more behind the scenes kind of view into some of the things I did in the past few weeks to bridge my past and future and connect the present to the past through celebrating my birthday. Now, most of you who have been listening know that I've lost my mom and dad when I was younger, so my mom was my senior year of high school and my dad was four years later. This was the late 80s, early 90s, and so it's normal to expect that when I go through my birthday celebration that I'm obviously missing the people that brought me to be born. My mom gave birth to me, the relationship I was the first daughter as far as even them being a couple and becoming a family even that special occasion for them was a big deal, and seeing pictures of when I was a baby and knowing how much it changed their life to become parents also makes it a very interesting memory. And then seeing my aunts and uncles and how young they were so there are parts of it that obviously, when you've lost someone, that it makes it a little more sensitive, a little more bittersweet, because you really can't go back and I can't reminisce with my mom and ask those questions, which is really for those of you again who listen know part of my, big part of my. Why is that? I want to make sure my boys, and maybe their children, the future, have those stories, so that we and encourage you all to do that, so less of those stories are lost, especially the ones we know want to be passed along, because I understand there's secrets that people don't want to share, but there's a lot of stories, whether it's of love or loss or challenge, that we just never take seriously enough to be able to pass along. I think we minimize sometimes our story, but maybe that's a whole other episode.

Melissa: 3:33

For this episode I apologize again. My voice is still. I've been suffering this respiratory issue and I'm hoping that I can get through. I have my hot cup of tea get through this episode without a coughing fit. But I wanted to come today and talk about some of how I bridged my past and present with my birthday tradition in the last week or so, while celebrating my birthday last weekend, well, the weekend before and I encourage you to listen to this from a lens of how you could do the same, whether for your birthday or for other holidays I am thinking and I'll share this a little more when we get to the end of the episode that I'm actually going to take this lens of how I can bring these memories into my present and bring those people that I miss into my present more, and do that through this idea of finding what the stories were, finding those memories, the objects, the senses and the items that really bring them to life. And that's what I really focused on for my birthday this year, and I can't wait to walk you through now how I went through that process.

Melissa: 4:50

So the first thing I did in order to do this was I really got into how can I bridge the past and present, bring it to my life now and really feel connected to my past and the obvious why for this was missing my parents. But I also wanted to share I don't know if I've said this before, and I would love to talk to more people who have lost loved ones that there is something in my being that is especially enjoys connecting with people from my past or seeing pictures from my past, because as you grow through grief and you move and you grow as a person, there's almost this feeling and I think, especially for the ages that we were when this happened and the idea that I no longer live in that home anymore, I no longer live in the town anymore. There's not much physically left that I see on a day-to-day basis. That I really feel like a big part of what I do is to prove that my childhood really happened, to prove that my parents were really there, to prove that it wasn't just a dream, because anyone who goes through grief, the further that spiral spirals out and you begin healing. There is, with the healing, a space that comes in and fills and it makes those memories a little bit cloudier. It makes your senses a little less remembering of the smells and the touches and the feel. So part of my purpose definitely has been to prove that these things really happened and I think I've been so busy in the last few years and raising my own boys I think as an empty nester, this has become sort of a theme to bring back my own childhood and now that I raised my boys, go back and look at the younger Melissa. So I think this is actually going to be something that continues through the year, as I may have mentioned.

Melissa: 7:09

So the first step I did was really to think about my why and then I really did go through several steps to work through this process and I want to share those with you now too. So the first thing I would say on how I did this is I really took time ahead of my birthday to reminisce, remember, revisit. I really took time to kind of look back at my other past birthdays, almost like I kept talking about birthdays past, like I was talking about the Christmas past and the different spirits that came to visit Ebenezer. But for me it was not scary spirits, it was more a matter of going back and looking at those, to remember them with sweetness and also to bring back some of those items that might bring back a sensory memory also. So I really took time, thought about birthdays past.

Melissa: 8:16

Another way that I brought in some of those memories was I asked others so if you're thinking about doing this after you've had time to sit and go down memory lane who are the people that were there with you that could share some memories? So for me, on my birthday. It's my aunts and uncles that I tend to go to and I have my uncle, gary, who always tells me his birthday story, and it's my favorite birthday moment of getting my wish from him and him telling me exactly where he was when he got the news. And I'm gonna share a picture, because we had a cousin sharing in a group chat some pictures, and one of those pictures that she shared was him holding me when he finally got to meet me in person. And so I think that asking people the stories whether it's your birth story or the first time that they get to hold you, or if we're talking about a different event aside from birthdays, bringing people in to be able to think about those but in talking about if you did decide to do this for your birthday, who are the people that could share those memories. And if you have your parents, then please start with them. Ask them those stories, do those interviews, get that recorded and save that so that you have in the future those places to go back to, those stories to go back to, to remember that it was real and it happened and they were real. It also allows you to get to know a different version of them. Even my uncle was in the army then and he was young and he was not married yet and didn't have his own kids yet, and so I again it was the first granddaughter and the first niece and so, knowing that there was a lot of lives that shifted, that changed with my birth, it was kind of cool. My parents became parents and had to grow up, but their siblings became aunts and uncles and also shifted in that, and so asking others their version of what they remember is an amazing birthday gift in itself and in the documented version of the podcast so the notes I am going to be linking some pictures to things that I had found in my research that all came from this journey back in time to find Little Melissa's birthday celebrations.

Melissa: 10:50

So I asked others and really hearing their stories was part of the birthday surprise for me and the birthday celebration for me. Next thing I did as part of this reminiscing was look through pictures that I had of birthdays past, and I did find some fun pictures of me as a baby with my parents. I found some pictures of me as a crazy elementary student being a girly girl, with all of my girly girl slumber party being crazy at the table, which brought me into a whole nother rabbit hole of exploring some memories of what my birthday traditions were, and so the cool part of that was we'll talk about that in. Actually, in the outcome, I'm going to show how I brought things to life. But actually from the memories I could see things like with my family pictures. I could see cake toppers. I could see with my friends, the streamers, the balloons, the party hats, the tablecloths.

Melissa: 12:13

I started remembering cakes from when I was a baby and what they were decorated like. I started remembering the cake that my grandmother made for me and what I liked and what I didn't like. So when I was younger and we would celebrate at my grandmother's house, there was a special cake. I'm going to talk about that in a minute of some of the findings that I had when I started doing this, but looking through pictures was another way that you can go back and pull up all these. The next thing I did when I started reminiscing and I talked a bit about thinking about cake toppers and the decor we used, is I actually got on and started googling some of these things because memories started coming up and I wasn't sure if they were real or not, and if they were mine or someone else's. But I started remembering decorations and I started remembering different recipes of cakes that I liked and different items and I was little so I wanted this brought up, this research, and now you can find so much vintage decor and vintage items and even television shows I would have watched with my friends at Slumber Party. So that was really cool and I let the memories flow.

Melissa: 13:37

So some of the findings that I found that really brought my birthday past to life were, first of all, that story of my uncle, and again I'm going to put a picture of him holding me. That was my first gift and my first outcome of a memory that was really beautiful and I was so happy to have. The other outcome that I had, or findings that I got, was remembering my party memories with my best friends. My mom must have been a saint because I had sleepovers and would have six or so girls at the house. We'd either be watching Donnie and Marie or solid gold dancers, and I know we took over the whole bedroom. So also, god bless, my sister, allie, who had was able to participate with some of it, but I'm sure was booted out of the room at some point, but those birthday memories really were able to come to life, more so from the pictures, and there was actually people in those pictures that I forgot were really good friends in elementary school, that I've reconnected with on Facebook and really found them, reached out to them, shared memories with them and reconnected, so it was really cool to have that. I don't have a lot of pictures that have been preserved, but I had my own little small photo book that I've had in a box and it did have some of those birthday party pictures.

Melissa: 15:20

Now, the other thing that I had as a party memory was my family parties, and the thing I remember is I remember that I was the only January birthday, so I was really loved that we had summer birthdays, we had spring birthdays, but I was really the only winter birthday, and so January would come and we'd go. I remember being really young and having both sets of grandparents and celebrating differently with each one having a cake at my Bubba's house, my mom's parents' house, especially as a baby and being younger, and then going and doing a big family celebration, because my father's family was a larger family, my mom's family it was just her and her brother, and her brother was in California or Hawaii for most of his life after joining the Navy. So it would usually be my grandmother, grandfather, my parents and our family. But when we would go to my dad's side of the family, there were five children in that family and the youngest was only 10 years older than me. So there was always people and we had a very big tradition of Sunday dinners and celebrating birthdays and different cakes depending on whose birthday it was.

Melissa: 16:40

So this memory started me remembering whose favorite cake was, which cake like which cake my grandmother made when it was someone's birthday, and me remembering that Angel food cake with the real whipped cream and strawberries was my favorite cake. I did not love cake when I was little, so it was either going to be an ice cream cake for me or it would be Angel food cake, which had kind of like a sugary, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth kind of flavor and she would make real whipped cream and it was always amazing. The other funny memory I have of that is when we had ice cream at my grandmother's house. It was a block, you know, rectangular box, of ice cream that had vanilla chocolate and strawberry, or there was a round one that had the vanilla chocolate and strawberry, but for our family we called it Van Chokstra. I don't know if it was called that. I think it was also called Napoleon.

Melissa: 17:48

I don't know.

Melissa: 17:48

We'll have to look into that I didn't Google that one because we called it fan chock straw, but that was the ice cream that we had and you got to decide whether you wanted chocolate, vanilla or strawberry or all three or two. However you wanted it. But that was definitely a big part of remembering ice cream at my grandmother's house, at my Bubba's. I do remember being little and having a cake topper, and this is where the thing started to get really fuzzy and I was trying to remember this one particular one, like ballerinas, or there was a carousel that was like this tiered thing with a cover on it and I could picture it with the horses and I was trying to remember it. And that's where I went into Google vintage cake toppers, because apparently cake toppers were a big thing in the 70s and 80s. So I found and I'm going to put this in the show notes pictures of one of the first cakes that I must have had as a decorated cake and it was a carousel and it had horses that were on like straws, so you could make the carousel, have the top and then you put the horses around in a circle. So that was one and I found, when I was looking, the exact ballerinas that I was remembering that we used to stick maybe the candles into as they were dancing, and the cool part of this, which will lead into the outcome of how I brought this into my next my current birthday. But the cool part was when I started Googling all this, I found those ballerinas on Amazon little teeny plastic pink and blue ballerinas again, the picture will be in the show notes of what I'm talking about. Those of you of a certain age will know what I'm talking about. But I was able to find them on Amazon and I did not pay extra for overnight, I'm just saying not, I wasn't that crazy, but they were able to get to me within a day or two. 24 pink and blue ballerinas, birthday ballerinas. And those of you who get my newsletter know about the birthday ballerinas and if you don't get the newsletter, we'll talk about on the end how you can go to Melissa and kitchencom and sign up for the freebie and or, on the contact page, say you want to be part of our newsletter because you get the inside scoop every week and some other resources. But those who were on the list heard all about ballerina, birthday ballerina, bash. So we'll get into that a little bit as we go on, but they got the story as it was happening.

Melissa: 22:34

So just to recap and give a little bit structure back to this conversation first we talked about my why of bridging my past and present and that idea of feeling like I wanted to prove that this had really happened. I wanted to bring my past and really feel it as I celebrated my birthday. Now I shared how I did this. I talked about how I take time to reminisce. I asked others, I looked through pictures and I even did some googling and researching and some shopping and I really let the memories flow and I didn't stop anything that was coming up and some of it was really, was really, yeah, really hard to be in that very bitter, sweet reminiscing mood, but it was exactly what my soul needed to show that it really happened. Because those of us who, again, when you go through grief and you have people you lost, while it's sad to remember them, it's scary when you begin forgetting them, and so this was really important to me.

Melissa: 23:49

The findings I talked about were the story of my uncle talking about when he got the call. He remembers the time, he remembers where he was. I talked about the party memories with friends and how I was even able to reconnect with friends. And then I was remembering birthday parties and differences between my Bubbas and my grandmothers, and then even remembering some of my cake toppers that were really blessed from the past and favorite cakes. So what did this do for me when it came to how I brought this into my present day birthday and how I brought it into the now? First of all, I was celebrating the weekend with a dear friend who happened to have the time off to head down to North Carolina with me and have a slumber party just the two of us. So that part alone felt really, really fun, and just the fact that I had reminisced how much I loved slumber parties helped me to look at a weekend away with a dear friend in a more playful way, in a more excited way, because it wasn't just a girls weekend, which is fun, but it felt more special when I thought about it being a slumber party and the playfulness and the celebratoriness that that brings.

Melissa: 25:19

And then I talked to you a moment ago about these ballerinas. So before I left on that trip, 24 pink and blue ballerinas were delivered to my house. Now I literally thought I was getting just a few and I was going to stick them on some cupcakes and take a photo up. But when you get 24, you can't waste 24 ballerinas. So part of our celebration was anywhere we went that weekend, everyone received a birthday ballerina, whether they knew it or not, so we shared it with weight staff and we shared it with people we met. We left some on the ladies room, we left some on shelves of the gift shops. We were leaving ballerinas and spreading good cheer everywhere we went and honestly, it was so much fun because not only was it a blast for us we felt like we were little kids kind of being mischievous and we were having so much fun but it really was fun for other people also. It was really cool to bring people into the whole experience and share with them and kind of have this playfulness we. There will be pictures. The pictures from this I will stick in. Some of them I'll stick in the show notes also.

Melissa: 26:50

Another outcome of this for me was also that memory of what the cakes were that I loved, and so I actually did do a deeper dive into Angel Food Cake and a homemade recipe that I will be sharing in my socials and maybe even that we can stick a link to in the show notes because it looked amazing and it's lots of egg whites and some sugar, but then the fresh whipped cream with strawberries and just pushes it over the top. I also brought back, like I mentioned, some of those remem remembrances of family traditions that I want to have in my day to day life and finally, the other thing that came from this aside from remembering all of these items and ways to to bring them now, I also had now even more stories that were brought to the surface that I want to preserve. So now there's stories of my birthdays past that I want to write about because I remember them more clearly. I want to write about the sleepovers and what I remember with the girls watching, donnie and Marie. I want to write about the cake at my grandmother and grandfathers with the whipped cream topping and the sound of her whipping the cream and the way the cake just melted in my mouth because it just disintegrates. I want to go back to what it was like to be at Bubba and Grampy's house and have the celebration with them in that sunny side dining area that we would celebrate on this big table, and remember what it looked like to have that carousel and just look so magical and surprising coming in from the kitchen door. I just have this visceral memory.

Melissa: 28:57

And also another birthday memory that came up from my high school was when friends actually put together a scavenger hunt around town. We grew up on Cape Cod, actually around the neighboring towns, and it brought us from one location to another location. We'd find a clue, we'd have to go to the next location and they especially created these clues for me, for all of us to have this experience and when I look back at it now I really do feel so much friendship and love and just specialness that the effort that went into making that, how it felt then and then to appreciate that now and to appreciate those friendships of those times of our years. So that is another thing that I'm really grateful that my friend Michelle was able to find the time, because it was very actually not as easy to find someone to get away with you for a four day weekend. It had to line up correctly because it was a specific weekend and we both needed it. It was something that brought us both to our past, because another specialness was that we have been friends since we had first started teaching. We have been friends since we had first started adulting, and now we're both getting to the moms of adult children young adult children, still in the thick of it, moms, but definitely in a different stage of our lives and so we really were able to not only look at my birthday memories from the past but our stories of our young adulthood craziness, of our first time away from home, really creating who we were as teachers, who we were as young women. We just went through a lot of memories and had a lot of important things that we each remembered and we were able to reflect through to where we are now, and so that was an amazing birthday gift to me. So again, my takeaway is go through these steps for your own birthday. Definitely try and look at gathering the data right, gathering the memories, bringing up what those findings and stories and things that mean to you are, and how can you do them now, how can you bring them into the present. And then are there stories you know you want to get written down. I am going to set an attention of going through the year really embracing this.

Melissa: 31:53

For those of you who did follow me at all through Christmas, I did a post of how we did Christmas night in a nod to my husband's late grandmother, my boy's great grandma, and we decided as a family to do all of her recipes. I was supposed to do a ham dinner. I always do a ham dinner. I had hurt my back, couldn't do it and had this epiphany of walking my talk or walking my walk, I don't know. But instead of ham dinner I had this inspiration to recreate her Christmas. And so in a family chat I said, hey, let's recreate Graham's Christmas dinner, which wasn't a sit down dinner, it was everybody gathering and it was things in crock pots. And so we all chose different recipes in the text that we were planning was so much fun to see what everyone's favorite or. But that turned out to be really special.

Melissa: 32:55

I'll put that picture up in the show notes just to show. But that was kind of where this started was. I am going to go through my year and find ways that I can bring those into my now, even if it's just for my own enjoyment, my family's enjoyment, or for remembering and getting those stories kind of solidified so that I can get them down on paper. But thank you all for allowing me to do this behind the scene, a little less formal way of doing our podcast. I am really hopeful that when I do next week's podcast my voice will be the same and I won't have to pause this taping as many times as you don't know I had to so that I would not have a coffee fit. But again, I so appreciate you for being listeners here.

Melissa: 33:46

I invite you to the website at Melissa and kitchen dot com. You'll have show notes for this podcast there, will have all the pictures linked there and will be a related blog post that will have all that. And finally, I'd like to invite you from this episode to join my mailing list. Get my weekly newsletter. You'll get a free tool when you sign up for the newsletter.

Melissa: 34:14

But also the newsletter itself is where you can see me putting these tactics, these strategies, this playfulness into into real life, and my audience that's on my Mailing list. My email list gets to see it firsthand. First I do a lovely personal note just sharing with you where I'm at, what I'm doing, how I'm really putting my Stories and preserving my stories and bringing things to life for myself. I'll have links to tools that I think are helpful. I do a link to the podcast, link to the blog post and some of the resources there. We do a writing prompt every week. That's unique, just for my subscribers on my list, so go to Melissa and kitchen dot com and sign up for my newsletter there and you will be notified when all the new exciting things are happening again. Thank you so much for spending your time with me and, as always, here's to preserving your past and sharing your stories.

Melissa: 35:28

Wasn't that a fun episode. I enjoyed our conversation so much and if you would like to continue our conversation, be sure to follow this podcast and share with friends. This helps share the mission of preserving the past with stories. Want more tips, tools and inspiration? Head over to Melissa and kitchen dot com and, as always, let's get writing your powerful personal stories.