Long Lost Treasure

After the last coupla sucky weeks, I had a trip to Maine sort of hanging over my head.  I usually love going, but this trip was about taking care of things.  My mother and her brother share her very old house.  While both of them are mentally all there, they are each frail, crooked, and in constant pain. My uncle appears destined to leave this earth one piece at a time.  He is a redneck Florida republican, she a feminist liberal democrat.  Certain many topics are best left undiscussed when both are present.  Mom's in Making Preparations mode.  She has nursed far too many people through their final illness, then had to deal with clearing their properties and is adamant she does not want her daughters stuck with that on her behalf.  She wants to move to a retirement community with assisted living and long term care facilities.  It is a painful process to watch, particularly as she disposes of her possessions.  She sold off a number of her antiques over the summer, including a dining room hutch which housed her favorite dishes, and I am the designated recipient of those dishes.  She needed me to pick them up.  I've been avoiding this trip because of the obvious implications.  Far easier to consider my own mortality than hers, especially as the specter of the Grim Reaper perches ever closer to other extended family members.  It seemed almost fitting that the weekend I could go involved complications here at home and a rare hurricane threatening to smack Maine.

So imagine my absolute sheer delight to be reunited with a long lost treasure from my childhood.  It is a  simple thing, a decorated round metal tray, possibly stained, definitely aged not gracefully.  I don't even remember all the details surrounding my first acquisition of this tray.  The memory: an older neighbor apparently enjoyed my company when I was just a wee thing.  She had two hobbies that fascinated me: growing rhubarb for jams and pies, and hand stamping designs on metal trays.  At one point, she worked on a tray while I watched.  I don't know if that was a one time event or if I repeatedly pestered her.  I believe I must have prattled on and on (does that surprise any of you?) while she worked, checking out her tools and exclaiming over the faces that appeared in her designs.  I was happy just watching the process unfold in front of me.  I vaguely remember feeling a bit sad when she turned it over to add her name and the year she made it.  1961.  I was all of 7 years old.  Turns out she wasn't quite done: she returned to the front of the tray to add one last little detail not in her other trays.  My initials!   Including the the T that stood for Ticklepicture because I was such a ham about getting my picture taken back then.  And then she put the tray in my hands and said "it's for you."   Instant treasure.  And as life unfolded, I lost track of that tray, but never forgot it, nor the woman who made it.  Often over these years, I've wandered what happened to it, afraid it ended up in some trash heap. On  Sunday,  that little bit of my childhood found it's way back into my hands.  I'm still grinning about it. 

Comments

[Jessica]

I've recently started convincing my parents that they need to do a little organizing so I don't get saddled with a mess (being an only child and all, it's all mine whether I want it or not!). Not fun to contemplate, but better to know their wishes and the value of some things than the alternative.

And what a great story about that tray! How cool that it found its way back to you!

[Doris]

What a neat tray and story! My parents are getting to the point of down-sizing too. They seem to think that my sister and I will want all of the things they are looking at getting rid of. So now she and I are "fighting" over their things. Not about which of us can have them, but about which of us has to take them. I am joking about the fighting, but we truly keep having to remind our parents that we both have been very fortunate and have many nice things that we chose. It doesn't mean that their things aren't nice, we just don't need to replace our things with theirs. Or worse yet, keep all of them. I already have more stuff than house.

[Anne]

How cool is that you have that tray!?!? That was worth the trip 10 times over.