A few days ago, I wrote about listening to an audio cassette recorded by my paternal grandparents at Christmas time in 1972, with grandma describing some of the gifts she and grandpa had received that holiday.

Grandpa’s gifts included some “kitchen stuff”—an apron, a baster, a meat thermometer. I don’t know whether grandpa liked to cook, but at that time, he was responsible for the household chores. By 1972, grandma was incapacitated with arthritis. At one point on this cassette, grandma commented, “Grampa offered to help me open [a present], but I told him I had all day.” Arthritis had crippled grandma’s hands into painful claws; it probably would have taken her all day to open a package. Amazingly, in spite of the condition of her hands, grandma did occasionally write letters. Again, this was 1972—long before personal computers became popular or affordable. So when I say she “wrote,” I mean she wrote. Longhand. I can’t imagine how difficult and painful that must have been.

Any letters from my grandparents are now long gone. I don’t remember finding much correspondence from them during the times my brother, sister-in-law, and The Boyfriend and I sorted through mountains of my folks’ papers and whatnot. We tackled that project on three main occasions: First, as we prepared to move my parents from their mobile home into an assisted living facility in early 2005. Next, after my father died later that year. And then again after my mother died in early 2006.

I know I got rid of at least one letter from my grandma. Part of me regrets getting rid of that and other memorabilia from both sides of the family. But where, in my small apartment and smaller storage unit, would I keep all that stuff? And I rarely look through my own photo albums, correspondence, diary entries, blog, etc. And whatever I do hang on to, someday I’ll die and someone else will have to sort through all that stuff and, knowing firsthand how overwhelming that can be, I’d like to minimize the task for whomever gets stuck with it.

Nevertheless … Note to my friend Matt: As we talked about yesterday—get your grandmother’s stories while you still can.

This afternoon, I listened to part of an audio cassette recorded by my paternal grandparents over 30 years ago. Does anybody remember audio cassettes? On the great technology timeline, they fall between 8-tracks (even I’m too young to really be familiar with those) and CDs.

My immediate family lived in the Puget Sound area of Washington state while my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in other parts of the country. During the 1960s and ’70s, long distance telephone calls were deemed “too expensive” so the family—maternal side as well as paternal—kept in touch by recording cassettes and mailing them to each other. (Nowadays, those of us who keep in touch do so mainly through e-mail.)

In the early ’70s, blank cassettes cost approximately one dollar and family members could ramble on for 30, 60, or 90 minutes. How do I know how much they cost? I have a small stack of family cassettes, one of which has a price sticker on the case. I don’t know if cassettes actually were less expensive than long distance calls, but they certainly were perceived as being cheaper. I don’t have any of my parents’ old phone bills, so I can’t do a cost comparison. A year or so ago, I could have done one—I shredded tons of old bills and other paperwork that belonged to my parents, and “tons” is probably literal. Some of the bills were dated as far back as the ’60s, though most were from the mid-’80s and later.

But I digress.

The cassette I listened to was recorded in December 1972, with grandma talking about the gifts she and grandpa received that Christmas. Among grandma’s presents was a variety of greeting cards. She commented, “They are so pretty, and have such nice verses. So often, cards don’t have nice verses.”

So that’s where I get that!

I often get frustrated when choosing paper greeting cards. I find cards with lovely graphics and sappy sentiments or awful attempts at poetry, or cards with decent verses and not-so-great graphics. Sometimes I buy multiple cards and sort of combine them—I’ll get one with a well-crafted message that I then transfer to a “blank,” well-designed card. (For some reason, e-cards are less of a problem. Maybe “online” inherently means “easier”?)

Anyway, now I know that this particular nitpicking is inherited.