At a memorial service yesterday, the deceased's brother spoke about he and his brother explored their dusty, mysterious attic together as boys. He recalled finding a 19th century cutlass, and books from the 1700s with the family name handwritten in the flyleaf. Such explorations in their New Jersey family farmhouse, he said, had awakened in his brother a lifelong love of history. What must it feel like, I wonder, to grow up in a house where your family has lived for centuries? Does it bring to life past eras? Is it comforting, to feel that your stock will live on? Or does it make you feel small, knowing that you are just a drop of water in the long river of humanity?
That's an experience I haven't had, nor my children. Neither will their children. Especially now, that I'm getting rid of so much stuff. Old family objects are among the hardest to let go of. We have no unfinished attic where such treasures can be safely stored for generations. In the modern style, we require a large house for day-to-day living, and so we've finished our attic, turning it into a t.v./rec room. The basement is not suitable for storing antiques; my great uncle's lovely 1920s bedframe suffered irreparable damage after less than a year down there.
I don't know the provenance of this fragile, beautiful old tea tray. It most certainly belonged to one ancestor or another. I've never used it. It's too large, too uneven, too fragile. I thought for years that I'd mount it on the wall, next to an antique mirror that matches its style, but I've finally come to accept that I'll never actually do so.
I like feeling connected to my history and my ancestors when I use old family things. I imagine my grandmother receiving these old dessert rose dishes as wedding gifts in Glasgow, and how she must have packaged them up, so carefully, and shipped them to Canada when they immigrated. I imagine my grandfather building this cedar chest in shop class as a teenager, how carefully he cut and fitted, stained and varnished. Almost a hundred years later, it's in perfect condition. And he wasn't a handiman at all: he was a lawyer. I imagine Rich's grandmother in her kitchen in Murray, Kentucky, with this Fiestaware bowl. Perhaps she gathered eggs from her own chickens in it. It's chipped, but we'll never give it away.
Some family heirlooms are a boon, others a burden. I've decided that it's okay to begin to separate the boon from the burden. And in a case where the object's history is unknown to me, and the object itself has no utility, I'm resolved to let it go. No matter how many times it's moved across the country with me.
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