We were reminded this weekend of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” This can be interpreted or applied in any number of ways. For us, it is a bit of an admonishment as we look at some long-wished-for family items that we removed from the house of a now-widowed father. One the one hand, we could be pleased that we “finally got” some items that we’ve wanted for years.
On the other hand, we obtained these items only after the death of a mother and a father’s decision to sell his home of 30-plus years and downsize. That’s the price of these pieces. It makes us assess our own home, especially as we just celebrated the marriage of a son. In those wedding preparations, we never heard the phrase, “Setting up housekeeping” or “Building a home.” Those were common phrases when we were married, and we heard it often in reference to our own parents’ post-wedding responsibilities. Wedding gifts were mostly directed toward the necessities of young newlyweds as they set up their new household.
Our son and daughter-in-law have been together for several years, and they explicitly have stated they don’t need “necessities” like a toaster or everyday dinnerware. Instead, they have requested funds for their upcoming European honeymoon. Fair enough. That’s their reality. Ours was different.
When told we were free to pick up some asked-for family pieces (is ‘heirloom’ too grand a word?), we felt gratitude and excitement. When we arrived, we also had the opportunity to unpack some storage bins and review the contents of a couple of cabinets. There was a yin-yang about this process. As the mid-century bun warmer was discovered and bestowed, there was a visceral, sense-memory of the smell of crescent rolls wafting up as the shiny, penguin-festooned warmer was passed around at parties and holidays. The piece is still in pristine condition — proof of how lovingly a mother had taken care of this wedding present. How small it seems now, and how small those crescent rolls must have been compared to the supersized ones of today.
But the hope and love and care that gleamed from its surface is shadowed by the loss of the person who cared for it. Preserving it, even. We would gladly return it to have her back.
Our domicile on Snob Hill is no manse. It is a modest-sized home, yet perfectly sized for us. When the other set of parents downsized, we made a few cross-state trips, U-Haul in tow, to bring home the furniture and other items that we wanted. Then we faced the challenge of how to incorporate those items into the tight, puzzle that is our home. It took months after each trip to rearrange and accommodate those items — usually at the expense of pieces we had acquired at estate and tag sales. Family pieces always trump items we had purchased more recently.
That still holds true. We are now the proud owners of a grandmother’s wrought iron, glass-topped table. It came from the best home furnishings store in southeast Missouri (which may or may not be damning with faint praise). This grandmother had impeccable taste, and we were anxious about whether or not it would be transferred to us. It was, and it is now displacing a larger similar table that already fills our sunroom. Hello, Craigslist and Marketplace. We will be sad to see that table go (and we just had the seats and backs reupholstered last year), but after repainting the ‘new’ table, we are happy.
Not everyone wants to be the steward of family heirlooms — or has the room for them. We have certainly curated the pieces that will best fit into our home. Some, sadly, will go out of the family. We can’t take it all, and the next generation won’t take most of it. There are plenty of stories about the youngins not wanted grandma’s china or tchotchkes, and so we go into that here.
We filled the bed of our truck with the items (and there are still others we want). We were reminded of and couldn’t help feeling acutely the sentiment in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” in which, a city daughter visits her mother.
“‘‘Oh, Mama!” she cried…I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!” she said. “I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.”’
We feel the need to ensure that we didn’t seem greedy or grubby, yet still wanting to emphasize how much we wanted certain items. It’s hard to know where that line is. We are still stung by the words of the mother who so carefully cared for that bun warmer, one of the rare times when she was handing over another family heirloom: “If I give you this, I better not find out you turned around and sold it!” There’s context to that incident, not for here — and maybe not for ever. It’s probably moot now that she’s gone, anyway.
And that’s just what happens. Couples make a life together. Create a home with stuff — something borrowed, something blue, something new. We can feel all the hope that goes into housekeeping because we experienced it. But nothing is forever. At some point — sometimes sooner (divorce, death, etc.), sometimes later (as in this case) — the stuff of coupling must be released.
Driving home with the truckload of items, items we remembered from our formative years, we hope to honor the transfer of tangible, touchable family history. Yet it is also a truckload of bittersweet reminders that family ‘time’ is never static, always changing. And can merely haul that notion around.
Which brings to mind the opening stanza of Mark Terrill’s poem “Down At the Gate”:
“You could never add up
all the years it took
for this time to finally come.”
Family heirlooms destined for Snob Hill.