Recognition and Rememberance

I have been reading blogs, posts, and news feeds about how today’s generation of new nesters don’t want Grandma Ethel’s china dinner ware,  Aunt Elizabeth’s chest of drawers, or sadly not even Great Grandma Edna’s silver tea service.  Second hand stores display them in pleasing array with clearance prices.  Etsy and Ebay are inundated with listings.  These items are often high maintenance requiring hand washing to maintain the gold rims; dark, heavy and huge space hogs, or considered just plain unusable dust collectors.

Being an upcycler before upcycling was a thing and having a passion for repurpose I have given much thought to this sad trend.  I see it as a disconnect.  A lapse in memories.  A breakdown in family.  A loss of history.  And the new nesters are not at fault.

Having recently lost another family member, a sibling this time, I am on my third estate desolution.  It is full of anxiety and sadness and remembering.  The anxiety comes from the shear mountain of stuff that I am now responsible for getting rid of.  And being the earth minded person that I am I literally look at every nut, bolt and tea cup to see if I can find it a new home not in the land fill.

The sadness is real.  It is loss.  It is the knowing that that mug will never have his hand around it again or that he will never sit in that chair again.  And to look at the sum total of a life and know that this is what it came down to can be sad.  But it can also be a joyful celebration of a life well lived.

I can trace my memories of seeing a particular nest of blue and white bowls back to my grandmother’s corner china cabinet.  And after her the cabinet and it’s contents became my mother’s.  And now they sit in my (different) cabinet and I remember.  Quite honestly I’d be afraid to use them.  They are old and the glaze is cracked and they probably have a few chips.  But they are a family heirloom nevertheless.  And then there is the ugly pewter plate circa. 1750 and the useless silver pitcher with pin holes in it, and so on.  Not treasures, but treasure-able.  Treasure-able because I remember.  I have a living memory of the associations and presence of these items in my life.  I grew up within an hour of my maternal grandparents.  My father’s parents were only three hours away.  We were familiar: adjective  fa·mil·iar  \ fə-ˈmil-yər  1: closely related, intimate 2: relating to a family

Recently I had tea, complete with beautiful china, crystal goblets and silverware at a friend’s home.  These treasures had belonged to her mother who now lives with her.  The elder spoke of a friend who was traveling to meet  her growing grandchildren for the first time.  The children live in Alaska and have lived a good part of their lives without ever having known their grandmother.   And this, in a nut shell, is why the new nesters don’t want Grandma’s dishes. There is no connection to them.

They have no memory of eating Thanksgiving dinner off of Grandma’s good china.  No idea of the ritual of opening the corner cabinet door and pulling out the depression era fruit bowl and see it over flow with purple grapes, bright tangerines and dark shelled nuts.  They have never seen that old dark sideboard filled with still warm pies and popcorn balls wrapped in waxed paper tied with shinny ribbons.  Social media cannot replace the smells, sights and sounds of the familiar.

Friday is the final garage sale.  Stop by if you are inclined.  The unearthing of treasured memories will go on – forever I hope.  They say remembering doesn’t require visual aides.  When someone passes you are told that you will always have them in your memories and in your heart.  But, this I have learned; memories fade.  So, use the china.  Eat with the silver.  And every morning when you spoon sugar into your coffee from your mother’s familiar fragile sugar bowl you remember and your heart stays warm.