Family Heirlooms

There aren’t a lot of things that were passed down in our house, no engagement rings from Grandma, no fine china in glass cabinets or enchanting silver candlesticks. The few things we did have, a dining room table set or some clay Christmas figures, had to be sold to people who had the space in their house or had to be thrown away cause they broke into dozens of pieces. Instead, we have a single wooden chair that creaks when you sit on it and 23 sets of decorative salt and pepper shakers, none of which we actually use.

Before it came to live in my great-great grandmother's house, this chair was probably used so school children could practice sitting with their back straight because of how stupidly uncomfortable it is. If you slouch even a little bit the chair digs into your back, forcing your body back into awareness no matter how much you want to rest. When my great-great grandmother died, she had six of these chairs and one dining room table to go with it. She also, coincidentally, had 6 children. So instead of giving them her jewelry or her books or even her house, she gave each child a single chair. Who got the table, no one knows. My great grandmother hid it under piles of boxes in the basement, my grandmother put it in a corner and used it as a decorative piece, and now my mom uses it a in her office because she doesn’t know where else to put it.

Downstairs in our living room, we own is 23 sets of decorative salt and pepper shakers. It's 23 more than we need, seeing as we use an entirely separate pair of bland looking salt and pepper shakers from Target in the kitchen. They’re not decorative in the sense that you can’t use them, they just include lots of colors and are prettier than the shakers from Target. I didn’t even know they existed until she decided to put shelves up in our living room. I asked her what she was going to put on them, and she said her moms salt and pepper shakers. When I asked her where she had put them before, she just told me they were in a box for the past dozen or so moves, and left it at that. I never asked why she hand’t put them on display before, and she didn’t tell me.

We don’t really talk to my moms side of the family. Ever since she moved to the city and had me, there’s always been some kind of disconnect between the two of us and the rest of them that gets us uninvited from small reunions or get togethers. I think that’s why the few family heirlooms we had always were stuffed into attics or into dusty boxes, because she’s always wanted to keep her family hidden away. I think we’re both more at peace now that we have our few heirlooms out in the open of our house, now that we’re recognizing the family who has come before us.