The Question of Downsizing and The Three Deer
Is there anyone who gives house room to legions of hand-me-downs and souvenirs without affection for all of them? In the sort of place where I reside now (I can’t decide whether "live" is the right word), everyone has had to make forced decisions about how to do what real estate agents like to call downsizing.
When I voiced my worry over this subject to my daughter, having repeatedly begged my offspring to give me clues as to their respective wishes and hopes, she said, "Mom, just make an inventory. Write down all the information, and then we can deal with it." Even though she grew up in a house with at least as many of these things in it (before we had to downsize to move 800+ miles), she doesn’t seem able to remember what the tag sale days were like. All three of our children expressed regret to see some things set out for sale because they didn’t have room to house them themselves, and neither did we. However, in the 15 years since, they seem to have forgotten those belated moans. Not just the regrets, but how many hundreds of hours would be involved in an inventory. Is she kidding?
Looking down over the couch in our living room is a several times great-grandfather. His portrait (according to family tradition on my mother’s side) was painted in 1812. His stock and high collar, and the style of the painter somewhat reminiscent of Rembrandt Peale, seem to confirm this. The frame is hideous, heavy, doubtless not contemporary. The whole thing is about 4’ x 3’. His wife, painted by a primitive and probably itinerant, artist, still resides in a crate in the basement. Same frame, same size, only she and the painting are, to put it politely, homely. The picture is supposed to have been painted at the same time, and again, the clothes would confirm this.
How many of our children have wall-space, let alone a taste for the antique to hang these two? There isn’t a thing from either my nor my husband’s side of the family (with the exception of a small magnifying glass) that can claim that kind of age. Darn it, the things are heirlooms.
That’s really nothing to what is carefully preserved in a large square coffee table with a glass top and a flocking-lined drawer. My mother loved to collect tiny things just because they were tiny. Pueblo miniature animals, for instance. There’s a small cast brass cannon complete with hole for applying the match that looks as if it once had been fired that was a gift to my late husband from a French friend and colleague, now gone too.
There are the small boxes I started to collect when my mother let me have my grandmother's silver pillboxes. I’ve added to them over the years. There’s a tiny Zuni spirit pot I bought when I was managing a gift shop in an Indian museum; two netsuke that were an impulse purchase on our last trip to New York City. And that isn’t all, but pretty soon, if I don’t stop, I’ll have already listed a third of the inventory my daughter suggests.
Birthday presents from my children’s first allowances, Mothers’ Day cards, school pictures, my husband’s letters from over 20 years as an export sales manager for his company, etc., etc. Every household has these things. We did find a home for my great grandparents’ Civil War letters at UNC Chapel Hill, but what about…? There really are days when I feel as if I were in thrall to objects, even as I remember my mother’s oft-repeated remark, "They’re just things."
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Veterans Health Care: Efforts to Hire Licensed Professional Mental Health Counselors and Marriage and Family Therapists
- Joan L.Cannon Wrote: A Family Inheritance: More Than 'Things' ... Emblems of Our Lives
- Adrienne G. Cannon Writes: Those Lonely Days
- Jill Norgren Reviews a New Inspector Gamache Mystery: All the Devils Are Here
- Rose Madeline Mula Writes: Look Who's Talking
- Celebrating 100 Years of Women Voting; Virtual Sessions: United States Capitol Historical Society
- Supreme Court Surprises The Public in LGBTQ Ruling: What is Sex Discrimination?
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi And Donald Trump Last Year
- Elaine Soloway's Hometown Rookie: Mirror, Mirror; Jealous; Terms of Endearment
- Margaret Cullison: Cooking with Grandchildren Including Inauguration Cookies, Orange Julius and Chocolate Birthday Cake