 My mother said choosing birthday and holiday gifts for me was easy. Unlike family members who lived mostly in their heads, I liked things.
Me, materialistic? I never shop just for the fun of it. I wear clothes till they’re full of holes. But I've come to admit my mother was right. I like many things for the personal meanings they hold. Mugs made by my Aunt Eileen, founder of the Potters’ Club (now Visual Arts Centre) in Montreal. Carved owls from visits to San Antonio and Greece, and an owl pendant from my spouse, celebrations of the barred owl that hoots in our woods. A high shelf in our living room holds my grandmother’s best doll, Ila; my mother’s best doll, Dorothy; and my best doll, Carol. I treasure the sense of connection back through generations of girlhood. Acquiring a brand-new trio of exquisite dolls holds no appeal. Stuff is still in boxes in the basement from packing up my parents’ house after they died. I've never unpacked my parents’ ornate 1930s wedding plates, which I keep because my father asked me to. One friend in the midst of closing up her mother’s home commented that you can pass along things, but you can’t always pass along meanings.
6 Comments
Deb
4/24/2023 08:15:32 am
Sarah - I’ve been thinking a lot about “stuff” since our house fire on Jan 3. A lot of our stuff was destroyed due to smoke damage and we’ve been living in friends’ homes while they are gone. So we’re surrounded by their stuff while our salvageable stuff has been in storage. As we prepare to move into our clean, repaired and empty home, we are giving careful thought to what stuff we want back. It’s been a process that encourages me to think about what’s important to me as well as the meaning of “home”. 4/24/2023 11:32:45 am
Deb, so sorry about your house fire and smoke damage. In my childhood, my grandparents' cottage burned down and (a few years later) our basement flooded three feet deep. Many of our family treasures were lost to one or the other. All these years later, I don't remember any specific losses, but at the time it felt as if the calamities wiped out our entire past.
Pat Groenewold
4/24/2023 08:50:45 am
This reflection struck a real resounding chord with me. I am a keeper of "stuff" that has sentimental value to me. I have several bins of things from my past. I have no family of origin relatives left, so these items are my link to my own history. 4/24/2023 11:26:23 am
Pat, taking photos of the treasured items is such a great response to the challenge of downsizing. I hadn't thought of it - except once, for my move from Evanston to Wisconsin. I'd been given two wonderful, large, fanciful drawings for my retirement from Rotary, a "before" (prim, business suit, tidy haircut) and "after" (bell bottoms, fringed vest, camera, hippie all the way). I loved the pair but they were too big to pack comfortably or put up on a new wall. Taking photos let me part with them. Unfortunately, now I have no idea where the photo prints are. 4/24/2023 10:16:40 am
All of us have "stuff." Some of us collect intentionally while others just end up with several ball caps from going to several games, or several T-shirts from all the runs they've participated in. When I teach writing I ask writers who are struggling with their characters to define what the characters collect. If they don't collect, what are the "things" that they tend to surround themselves with? The answers usually help create a more rounded character for a novel or short story. Very interesting post! It's a universal topic. 4/24/2023 11:17:55 am
Christine, what a wonderful suggestion for rounding out a character! You've set me to pondering what the real-life collections of friends and neighbors would suggest about them to a reader who encountered them on the page. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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