For Mother’s Day this year, my daughter gave me a subscription to an online story-writing platform that emails me a writing prompt each week. “It seems you are enjoying writing and reminiscing recently, so I thought it would be a fun project,” Cynthia told me. And it is. But sometimes the questions sent as prompts trigger more complex feelings than you might expect.
Take this recent one: “Catherine, what keepsakes or family heirlooms do you treasure most?” In clearing out our rowhouse in 2022 and my father’s retirement cottage this past January, I’ve stared down a mountain of keepsakes. Just the word itself makes me anxious. Keep them where, for how long? And for whose sake?
Relics of a bygone age
Such questions face many of us in our sixties, seventies and beyond. As our parents pass on, they leave behind items that reflect the styles and values of another era – a time when cheap, mass-produced goods were not yet ubiquitous and people handed down well-made furniture and housewares from one generation to the next.
What to do with these items? The obvious solution is to use them. So the blue Spode Gloucester that was my parents’ fancy china for special occasions now serves as my everyday dishware.
Not everything is useful. A needlepoint sampler made by my great-great-great grandmother, born in Maine in 1817, somehow wound up in our basement in DC. Fortunately, the Maine Historical Society was glad to have it – an ideal outcome, in my view. If I keep something in my sock drawer, no one but me will ever see it, and its eventual fate is uncertain. But if an archive or historical society accepts it, it will remain in their collection, available for others to learn from and enjoy.
But most vintage housewares aren’t rare enough to be of historical value. Nor do they have much monetary value, despite what our parents may have thought. eBay and Etsy are glutted with furniture, silver, and china that boomers want to unload but few young people want to buy. So that leaves sentimental value. If an object had meaning to a departed family member, does that mean I need to keep it?
Not everyone is as conflicted. I just returned from visiting friends, an architectural historian and a historic preservationist in St. Paul. Their stone house, built in 1859, is packed floor to ceiling with books, furniture, artwork, and antiques passed down in their families. Arriving at their house was like stepping into a museum. They’ve even installed rolling library ladders to access the high shelves.
It was fascinating and I loved it, but I can’t quite envision such an approach for my own space. So much history! I’d feel the ghosts of the past surrounding me, jostling me, whispering as ghosts do.
The museum of Dad
My father’s retirement cottage was crammed with objects he treasured. In his instructions to my brother and me, he explained what each item meant to him and admonished us to preserve it:
One thing I would like you to keep is my old Doulton tobacco jar. I bought it in London in 1945 for a few shillings. The war had just ended and I was back on leave from Germany, visiting the lovely Joan Parry in Bromyard. We went to London for the day, tramping the bombed streets and sightseeing. I used the jar for many years until I gave up smoking a pipe.
Dad lamented the current trend toward cheap, disposable manufactures. “I tend to keep things a long time,” he wrote.
Perhaps that is because I grew up in the Depression, when material goods were in short supply. I can look at something and recall exactly how it came into my possession, and from whom. I was never a fan of shopping in department stores for new things, largely, I think, because the quality seems to decline from decade to decade. On the other hand, I can look at something used by your grandparents, or great-grandparents, and somehow feel attached to them, and to their time, merely by having it.
A set of gold-rimmed demitasse cups along with six silver demitasse spoons and a tiny sugar tongs were wedding gifts to my parents in 1948. Again, we were urged not to part with them:
I would appreciate it if you would keep these for your children. They are beautiful and valuable cups. I know, of course, that up-to-date people no longer serve demitasse, although they should.
A wing chair, he wrote,
came from my family’s house on Lamberton Road in Cleveland Heights. It is now recovered, but when I was a boy it was covered in red plush. My father often sat in it with me on his lap as he read Uncle Wiggily to me from the Cleveland Press. Please save this chair for your own children and their children.
What to do? The chair is stiff and uncomfortable, in my opinion. I can’t imagine future generations wanting to sit in it. Furthermore, the memories the chair evokes are not my memories; they’re my father’s, and he is gone. To me, it’s just a chair.
And that’s the problem with heirlooms. An object starts out laden with meaning, but as it’s passed down over generations, its meaning recedes into the distance and finally disappears. When I contemplate keeping such an object, I also have to wonder what will happen to it when I’m no longer here. Each memento becomes a memento mori.
After my father’s death, we had 30 days to vacate his cottage. We took as much of the contents as we could manage, but still ended up donating a great deal. Sometimes I wonder if we went too far. Perhaps the ghosts really are hovering, demanding to know what I did with their stuff.
I kept the tiny silver spoons in their velvet-lined case, along with the note. My brother has the cups. I also kept a sterling silver sugar bowl and creamer given to my parents. I display them as decoration, since no one uses silver tea sets anymore. Although they should.
Exactly what I am facing now! My parents were both historians and our house accepted all the papers and letters every other branch of the family wanted to get rid of. Are they important historical records? Yes, but only of a typical family from WW1 to the present. I wish there were an Ordinary Families Museum!
I certainly agree... it is a dilemma that I've been considering as well. .. And you didn't even mention pictures..