Birthday Keepsakes started with Karin

More than thirty years ago, she had an idea that a birthday was worth more than a card. That the day someone arrived in the world came with a whole world attached to it. The songs playing. The headlines. What people were talking about at dinner. She figured out how to gather all of that onto a single page, and she made the first one, and then she made thousands more.

For three decades she made keepsakes for babies who are grown now, for grandparents who never expected to be surprised, for couples on anniversaries they thought would pass quietly. She did it one at a time, by hand, and she never automated the care out of it.

[One or two sentences here about why Karin started, or what she would say the point of it was. Even a phrase from one of her emails.]

When Karin decided it was time to step back, this could have simply ended.

Which brings me to my dad

In the mid 90's, my father started giving a Birthday Keepsake to every single baby born into our circle including his own kids. Friends, family, coworkers, neighbors. If a baby arrived, a keepsake showed up. He did it for more than thirty years without missing anyone.

So when I had my son, I knew exactly what was coming. I had watched my dad hand these to other people's children my whole life, and now it was finally going to be our turn to be on the receiving end of it.

Then he told me he couldn't. Karin was closing Birthday Keepsakes.

It did not sit right with me. Not just because of my son, though I would be lying if I said that wasn't where it started. It was that I knew what my dad's keepsakes had meant to every family who got one. Thirty years of them, sitting framed in nurseries and hallways and now places like offices (that's where mine hangs). If it ended, all of that ended with it.

So I reached out to Karin.

She has spent months teaching me how she did it, patiently, in more detail than she owed me. Every keepsake I make now comes out of what she built and what she taught me.

Same tradition. Same care. New hands.

I make every keepsake myself, right here in Michigan. Karin's system, Karin's standard.

My son doesn't have his yet. When we open, my dad is going to be my first customer, and I am going to make it for him the way Karin taught me. Decades after he started giving these away, he finally gets to give one to his new grandson.

Thank you, Karin. For all of them, and for trusting me with what comes next.

— Allyssa