Joan L.Cannon Wrote: A Family Inheritance: More Than 'Things' ... Emblems of Our Lives
When my paternal grandfather passed away, one of the provisions of his will was that all household goods were to go to his one daughter — my mother. The three grandchildren were each to choose three keepsakes from the house. One cousin (female) was nine years my senior, the other (male) two. None of us was a child, so at the time, we were struck by the thoughtfulness of such a bequest.
Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons
We arrived to have the door opened by Josephine, my mother's sister-in-law. I'd spent many happy hours with my cousins in their house in school holidays. My uncle was a jolly, enjoyable man. The hundreds of hours spent at 'the farm' were still always outstanding ones during those growing-up years. The house was like a second home, partly constructed of fantasies of a completely foreign and enchanting existence after the pleasant anonymity of New York's lower east side.
The farm was in central Ohio, and my parents and I lived in New York City. Since my aunt and her husband (my mother's brother) and their two children lived only about ten minutes away, it wasn’t a surprise that they were on the scene before my mother and I were.
I hurried to the big china cabinet in the dining room to put in my bid for iridescent finger bowls like soap bubbles I'd never seen anywhere but on their shelf in the glass-fronted cabinet. From the time I could walk, I'd spent time on every visit gazing at what looked like something from fairy tales.
In the living room of this house was my mother's piano, built specially for her when she was a serious music student in her teens and early twenties. A 'parlor grand' fashioned by Steinway and cased in polished cherry with deeply carved cabriole legs. It was a beautiful thing of itself.
The front hall housed an enormous grandfather clock with the phases of the moon as well as the sun rising and setting according the date and time, its Westminster chimes a cherished accent of my childhood. That house and its surroundings are still almost part of me physically. I can’t think how much more it must have meant to my mother who had grown up there, though her occasional references to events were without visible emotion. Still, that was her style about life in general.
By the time we left that afternoon, my mother had told me that Josephine had claimed the grandfather clock, the piano, and the finger bowls I so coveted. I erupted with fury. At nineteen, perhaps I should have known better, but I was livid.
"Why didn’t you point out to her the terms of the will?" I demanded.
My mother kept her eyes on the road as she drove down the driveway to the state highway. "Not worth a fight," she said flatly.
I fumed. "But she has no right..."
My mother cut me off. "They're only things," she said, not for the first time I'd heard her make that remark, though never before in such a loaded (to me) situation.
My mother passed away at ninety-two. Those words were to be repeated a number of times before she died, and they always silenced me. Because I'm only six years away from her final age, now I've realized the implications of her by-word are important and practical. The trouble is that now I've also come to realize that concrete objects have a variety of values besides the intrinsic or esthetic ones to which I assume my mother referred.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Sanditon's Masterpiece Series Finale ... Snap-dragon Was Played in the First Episode ... How Is It Played? (Question From PBS)
- Veterans Health Care: Efforts to Hire Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists
- Upcoming Exhibitions at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT): Head to Toe and Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion
- Julia Sneden Wrote Napkin Rings and Saving Ways: Initials Engraved in Silver, Rings That Were Clearly Ours, Each One Different From Anyone Else's
- Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Exceptional Garments Alongside 34 of Her Drawings and Paintings
- Ferida's Wolff's Backyard: Is Nature Doing Social Distancing? The Town Where the Official State of New Jersey Was Declared
- Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Climbing Trees & A Guardian List of Top 10 Books About Trees
- Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe; Don't Miss The Draughtsman-Writer
- Julia Sneden: The Comfort Zone of Yardley's English Lavender Soap, Merle Norman Sun Cream, Fleers Double Bubble Gum, Miner's Lettuce, A Bosky Dell, A Granddaughter's Hand in Mine
- Julia Sneden's Magic Moments at the End of Summer