Things We Lost, Things We Kept

In my grandparents' house in Arkansas, we had a hodge podge of random dishes and plates. I guess, looking back, you could call the decor Depression-style, and I loved it. I had my favorites--the plate with the cracks under the glaze and tiny roses circling the outer rim, the spoon that had a similar floral etching and had probably been part of an elegant set when it was new, a highball/Collins glass with vertical irish green stripes. I would think about my grandfather's stories of our ancestors from the old country while I sat with my glass of milk, imagining that somehow they lived in those stripes on the glass.

Kids...

Sometimes if I'm a homewares store, I'll find myself absently scanning the glassware section for those irish green stripes, but I never find it. The remnants of my Arkansas childhood are all gone now. My grandparents, my childhood collections of rocks and sticks and bottles that my brother and I dug up in the back field, things I wrote from ages 11-18, all the letters my dad wrote to us when we were kids, the dishes--they're all gone now.

In the time that I was trying to build some semblance of a life elsewhere, the house I grew up in was changing hands. This place where most of my childhood memories were stored was loaded with triggers I wasn't ready to face, and I was glad for the distance from reminders. It was necessary and I am grateful for the opportunities I had that took me away from it.

Now though, I find myself wanting to embrace everything that was part of my life then. I understand now what a gift I was given, to grow up with people who loved me, however hard it was on all of us, and I want all the reminders and evidence of that near me in those physical things. 

The things are gone and so are the people. It occurred to me this morning that my generation is the last to have deep ties to those people who endured the Great Depression. In my family, my brother's children weren't even born yet when my grandparents' lives ended. I don't know how to grow or preserve food anymore, but that's cataloged information I can look up. The things that can't be taught elsewhere are the grace people who had nothing developed over hard times. 

I was gifted knowledge of how to persevere in a way that looked out for the others around us, and I know that's the most important part of survival. We band together where we stand and we figure it out until it gets better. There was no more room for Us vs. Them for my grandparents during the awful time they survived in the 1930s.There was only what they had to share so everyone could make it. 

I have a set of glasses now that remind me of the spirit of sitting at our kitchen table listening to the stories of our people. I guess that's as good as it gets--the imperfect estimation of a fond memory. But the lessons run deep. I remember them, and now is the time for sharing.