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A traveling birthday card
has become a family tradition.

CART WALDMAN
Special to the Jewish News

B

ella Brown hasn't bought a birthday card
for either of her daughters in 48 years.
Sitting in her Trowbridge apartment in
Southfield, she calculates she has saved at
least $300 over the years.
"The card'was 15 cents when I bought it," 'she
says.
Today, at 90, Bella vividly remembers giving the
card to her daughter, Dorothy, on her 17th birthday
in September 1952. The following February,
Dorothy signed the card and gave it to her older sis-
ter, Lois, on her birthday.
It kind of became a habit," says Lois. "I signed it
a third time, and re-gave it back to our mother on
her birthday, three months later in June." Since
then, Bella and her daughters, Dorothy Love, 64, of
Farmington Hills, and Lois Novitz, 68, now of San
Diego, have kept the card floating between them on
their birthdays.
It was mailed or hand-delivered locally for the
first 10 years. But once Lois moved out of town,

Dorothy, eita,lois and their birthday card

56

they began asking their beauty shop operators and
friends in other cities to mail the card for them, to
throw off the birthday recipient.
"We always use oversized envelopes to disguise its •
shape, and to be original," says Dorothy. "And this
way we don't recognize the return addresses."
Bella, who to this day will not answer the door
without her makeup on, was born in Toronto. She
moved with her parents to Detroit when she was in
second grade. She married Harry Brown in 1930,
owner of Harry Brown Jewelers on Livernois and
Fenkell in Detroit. Helping Harry in the retail store
and keeping active in organizational work, such as
Bicur Cholim and the American Jewish Congress,
she also volunteered translating Russian to Yiddish
for immigrants visiting doctors at Sinai Hospital in
Detroit.
Becoming a widow in 1964, Bella continued to
live independently in Southfield. She moved to
Trowbridge two years ago.
To celebrate her 90th birthday on June 20, Bella
didn't fancy a luncheon with her lady friends or a big
party. Instead, her children and their spouses, as well
as five out of her six grandchildren traveled from
California and Arizona for a surprise birth-
day weekend. "I couldn't absorb what was
happening," Bella says with delight about
having her family surrounding her.
After receiving "the yellowing card,"
which is now held together with a piece of
tape, Bella safely placed it in her front clos-
et, as she always does, next to a box of
important papers. In three months, she will
mail it on to Dorothy, who puts it in her
address book to safeguard it.
When Lois gets the card, she keeps it
next to her passport.
With 48 years of birthday wishes, the three
agree that "there's still plenty of room to
write" — they have yet to use the back side.
Half the fun, they say, is trying to find
the microscopic spot where one of them
last wrote their dated greetings. ❑