Knickknacks

Day 16: Knickknacks

Knickknacks featured large in my childhood, especially Hummel figures, courtesy of a flock of Scottish ladies. Aunt May. Aunt Nettie. Aunt Bessie. Aunt Effie. Cousin Barbara. Auntie Mo. Grandma Abrahams. My mother. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the backseat of the car in Windsor, Ontario with my 98-year-old Scottish great-grandmother while the U.S. Customs Department unwrapped two cardboard cartons full of figurines, looking inside each and every wee precious lassie, bathing baby with a bluebird in its hair and whistling hiker in lederhosen. (I'm sure the baby needed a bath, what with a bird defecating in its hair.) Luckily for my mom and me, Grandma wasn't using porcelain figures to smuggle heroin over the border.

Remember how Caroline Ingalls would carefully wrap up that damned china shepherdess, put it in the covered wagon, and patiently wait until the new fireplace mantel was built in the still more remote cabin so yet again the shepherdess could be unwrapped and put in pride of place? Remember how Laura, Mary and Carrie would have rather cut off their hands than pick her up and risk breaking her?

I admit it: I hardly have any knickknacks. I just like the word knickknack so much, I wanted to use it as a title for one of my posts. Knickknack. Knickknack. Knickknack. So I'm scouting around the house, looking for something on topic that I can get rid of, and here's what I found: a cookie tin that Nil and Jess left for us after they moved, a sewing kit Barbara left for us after she moved, an empty box that displays photographs, and a few Christmas ornaments that we never put away. Into the Goodwill box.

I bet if we had only one of each thing, we wouldn't lose so much. Like spoons (where do they all go?), water bottles, sunglasses, reading glasses, travel mugs and Tupperware. Admit it: you've all had to buy more of these because the ones you had got lost. So I'm launching a "Why So Many?" theme. Look for WSM in the title once a week or so. Starting tomorrow: Clocks and Watches.