![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/IMG_1912-225x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nFor those targeted in the demographic as \u201cmature\u201d readers, there is a wealth of material everywhere you look these days replete with advice about disposing of your belongings, especially older items.<\/p>\n
Perusing this advice is not recommended on a dark and dreary day.\u00a0 Do the closet purging now, so your children don\u2019t have to later, admonishes one so-called expert.\u00a0 Get rid of everything that doesn\u2019t bring you joy, preaches another.\u00a0 (That one especially inspires a gag reflex.\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 My vacuum cleaner doesn\u2019t bring me joy, but some things are just necessary.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not turning my house into a personal temple to my own rapture.\u00a0 Spare me.)<\/p>\n
And then there are the dire predictions about locating useful destinations for your objects, especially items from bygone days.\u00a0 The problem is not what to purge, reads one article, but what to do with what you are shedding. No one wants your stuff, one writer declares\u2014especially not your children\u2014and particularly old dishes, glassware, and silver.\u00a0 Even charities serving the needy may not accept such items, and readers are advised to research this carefully.\u00a0 \u00a0What to do?\u00a0 Facebook marketplace?\u00a0 eBay, where listings appear to linger for ages?<\/p>\n
I suppose it is likely that some of our long-used family belongings could someday end up in such places.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019d have to catch them first.\u00a0 That’s because many of our family pieces have logged more miles than the newly retired with the keys to a sparkling new RV.\u00a0 As a tribe, we give our own special meaning to the phrase \u201cantiques road show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with an old maple rocking chair, with elegantly curved arms, a wonderfully tilted back, and the long, deep rockers that make for a fine, fine rocking interlude.\u00a0 That chair has at least 400 miles on it.\u00a0 When wewere dispersing items after my father\u2019s death, the rocker traveled home with me from Kentucky to Tennessee, and after I moved again a few years later to more limited space, it traveled back up the exact same road to a sunlit spot in my sister\u2019s larger house.<\/p>\n
These travels are not limited to comfortable furniture.\u00a0 I recently came into possession of a dozen gleaming silver-plated water goblets, future use as yet undetermined, but gosh, they are eye-poppers.\u00a0 If I think carefully about history and lineage (a dangerous thing in such situations), I believe mine is the fifth family home in in which they have resided.\u00a0 It\u2019s<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
best not to attempt a road mileage total on that one.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/IMG_5696-225x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
My longtime interior design consultant and dear friend once described my home design style as \u201cinherited.\u201d\u00a0 And while that one got a roar of appreciation when I shared it in the fam, the pattern emerged decades ago for very practical reasons.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that my house is crammed with items representing some overburdening emotional obligations.\u00a0 It began as much the opposite: Any furniture from family sources I liked and could use, as a young person starting out, was a piece I didn\u2019t have to pay for.<\/p>\n
Still, I freely admit our family treasures may offer some endearing, tangible connections to those who passed them on.\u00a0 A few years back I was mesmerized<\/a> by a fascinating book about Te M\u0101ori<\/a>, the first U. S. exhibition of ancient art from the native M\u0101ori people of New Zealand. The opening of the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was preceded by elaborate tribal rituals symbolizing honor for and protection of the ancestral artists, who are believed by the M\u0101ori to spiritually inhabit the art they created.<\/p>\n In our defense, we are at least beginning to think and talk about \u201cre-homing\u201d some of these family items, as the term is currently used in reference to rescue animals, not necessarily a flawed analogy.\u00a0 As the current trustee of two sets of fine china from two generations back, I was recently struck by the notion that two might be one too many.<\/p>\n I really need to make some more space in my cabinets, I lamented on the phone to my sister, and I don\u2019t really want to start packing things away in storage boxes.\u00a0 \u201cI know, I\u2019m the same,\u201d she answered with a sigh.\u00a0 \u201cWe aren\u2019t moving anywhere, anytime soon, but I am starting to think about what I can begin to purge from this house, working toward when that time comes.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a particular, unspoken code for these family chess moves, and I was careful to follow it:\u00a0 I\u2019m probably going to get rid of Mamama\u2019s good china, I continued.\u00a0 (Mamama being our maternal grandmother.) I just don\u2019t use it or need it.\u00a0 That is, of course, unless you want it.<\/p>\n Pause for here for a millisecond of dead air in the ether.\u00a0 \u201cWait,\u201d she pondered. \u201cWhich ones are those?\u201d\u00a0 Absorbing my description of the old ivory porcelain with the brightly flowered centers, she suddenly leapt the tracks on the strategic execution for starting-to-get-rid-of-stuff.\u00a0 \u201cActually, I might take those.\u201d\u00a0 She had reasons, of course, but they elude memory at the moment, because she had a chess move of her own lurking.\u00a0 \u201cYou might want these ones I have that were Snowy\u2019s (our paternal grandmother).\u00a0 They\u2019re all-white, and they\u2019re gorgeous.\u00a0 You\u2019d really like them. As a special bonus offer, I\u2019ll throw in the cushioned, zippered containers I bought to keep them in and protect them from chipping.\u201d<\/p>\n The absurdity of this exchange finally ignited a roar of laughter from both guilty parties, but even that burst of self-knowledge does not appear to be forestalling next steps.\u00a0 More road show might be coming.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll send you a photo,\u201d she said, \u201cand if you want them, I\u2019ll bring them when I come down to visit in a couple of weeks.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll take the others, if they are the ones I am remembering.\u201d<\/p>\n On it goes.\u00a0 On a recent weekend afternoon, a text from my daughter inquired what I was doing. I confessed to furiously polishing an ornate, silver-plated, Victorian-style tea and coffee set that belonged to a great aunt who died 40 years ago.\u00a0 Even the hopeless optimist in me knows that charities have no use for such things these days, and a perusal of eBay showed too little value to be worth the trouble of the transaction.<\/p>\n What am I going to do with this thing?\u00a0 I asked her, rhetorically.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe use the sugar bowl to store device cords,\u201d she attempted, helpfully.\u00a0 \u201cAnd water your plants with the teapot?\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s my girl, I thought, a bright flicker of pride warming my heart and emboldening me to push forward another step.\u00a0 I sent a photo of the silver water goblets, asking, \u201cI don\u2019t suppose you want any of these?\u00a0 No obligation, no hurt feelings if you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n And it was the second half of her response that turned the flicker in my heart into a warm, enduring beam of hope for the next generation.\u00a0 \u201cSure, I\u2019ll take some.\u00a0 Now, whose were those, again?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For those targeted in the demographic as \u201cmature\u201d readers, there is a wealth of material everywhere you look these days replete with advice about disposing of your belongings, especially older items. Perusing this advice is not recommended on a dark and dreary day.\u00a0 Do the closet purging now, so your children don\u2019t have to later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-mid-life-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/IMG_1501-225x300.jpeg\")
My own treasured artifacts mostly weren\u2019t made by our earlier generations, but I still enjoy thinking about what their spirits, if residing therein, could pass on to us. Could I replicate the hospitality at my own dinner parties that always illuminated my parents\u2019 home by remembering to pull out my mother\u2019s crystal wine glasses? If we keep that old rocker in the family circle, will we someday emulate with our younger members the long conversations I had with my dad when I sat in it, across from his favorite perch in their den, while we chatted?<\/p>\n