In that same house was a set of golden oak library furniture in what was always referred to as the morning room. The slant-front desk had two fully three-dimensional carved gnomes sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the spiral-carved stiles that supported the drawers. Similar figures adorned the four legs of the matching library table with its curved stretchers beneath, where another little man sat where those stretchers crossed. Glass doors covered the shelves of the bookcases with spiral posts surmounted by more gnomes at each end.
Even then I didn't like golden oak, even though I knew it had been the fashion at one time, but I was enchanted by the carving. The workmanship was museum quality. Later I learned that the furniture had been made by the German craftsmen (pattern makers, they were called) my grandfather and his brother and cousin had recruited as part of the design and manufacture of the first roller doors made for factories and large warehouses. The three men had started fortunes with the help of those immigrant woodworkers. Their wonderful art would outlast us all and our children. The furniture seemed in its aura of elegance and rarity to be examples of the prime of life of that generation of entrepreneurs; each was one of a kind. I wish I knew what had become of them.
In a corner stood a small Louis XVI vitrine. It contained a blown ostrich egg, a small opalescent flask made of Roman glass that had a strange bloom on the surface like that on a grape still on the vine, and several other small objects collected from the family’s travels.
On the mantel piece in the living room hung a tiny brass lamp. On the lid covering the oil chamber sits a tiny crudely cast mouse. It now hangs on my mantel.
In my living room is an Empire table of mahogany veneer in fairly deplorable condition. Desperate to recover some if its good looks, I took a steam iron to the blistered and cracked veneer on the top, stripped its clouded finish off, and refinished it. It's the only piece of furniture from my father's Memphis forbears remaining after the Civil War.
As one advances in years, one accumulates possessions the way a caddis fly larva accumulates grit. The glue that makes us carry it all along with us is in a way self-secreted as well. However, it's psychic rather than physical — emotional rather than material.
Perhaps the most obvious example is a wedding band. There's a string of coral beads that belonged to a great-grandmother, samplers made by an ancestress of my husband’s in 1813, the parchment doctoral degree awarded to my father, the unsigned portrait of a three times great-grandfather and his wife, the wedding presents, military medals, camp swim trophies and school athletic medals.
Every home worthy of the name is blessed, however humble or luxurious it might be, with those things that recall what’s important to us. Souvenirs of holidays we might not remember without their presence on a shelf. Plaques to remind us of a time when someone close to us was important — to other people; dozens of special gifts, and numberless photographs.
Unless memories and tradition count as 'things," these concrete reminders are not just things. They're emblems. They’re absolute reminders — souvenirs in a literal sense — of what has happened in many lives, not just our own. As such, they serve as records that are apt to endure longer than any on paper.
So I choose to take a different attitude from that of my eminently practical and ordinarily completely unsentimental mother, and cherish and even show them off. I've begun a list of which items our children have mentioned or shown a fondness for so they may claim them. Daughters-in-law and granddaughters already have some antique jewelry. My daughter will get quite a bit more, much whose greatest value is that it was gifts to me from her father.
I try to take care of our "things." Like the priceless photos of my late husband, they offer a surprising degree of comfort on days when nothing else can.
©2014 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
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