Most Treasured Heirlooms

Most Treasured Heirlooms

       These quotes express some important ideas about family heritage.

"A family with an old person has a treasure of gold." Author Unknown

"If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them, too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are." 

Madeleine L'Engle

"How will our children know who they are if they don't know where they came from?"

John Steinbeck

"Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories."  Author Unknown

"Do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.  Teach them to you children and your children's children."

Deuteronomy 4:9

           Maybe we parents of today worry too much about entertaining our children.  We fear that they will be bored if we talk about the past or tell our stories. We fear we will get the dreaded "eye-rolling " response. So...they are bored. Boredom has served as a fertile ground for many wonderful, creative, intelligent thoughts. Why do adults always say that children will get in trouble if they are bored?  In my opinion, it is mostly a lack of guidance and supervision that gets our children in trouble, not boredom.

          A child will see Brave ten times, but does not know any of his or her family's stories.  Our children have not learned to listen to the adults in their families (or their teachers at school), but they can watch a movie or play a video game for hours. Some of these are the same children who bear the label of ADHD.

         A family must find time for the sharing of stories or the stories will be lost.  Make meal time, bedtime and time in the car a time for family stories, if there are no other times in the day.   Family stories are unifying and identity-building, but they can also be used to teach lessons about what works and what doesn't work in life.  

         Will the families of the future just look like a bunch of different aged roommates living in the same house or will it look like a "group home"? Will everyone be watching their own shows and eating their own food at their own times in front of  multiple TV's?  Will the parents' role in the family be mostly just shuttling children and earning the "cash"? Of course, this is a complex question and the answer depends on several things, but there must be that solidifying identity that makes each family special and gives us a framework of belonging. There is a binding, calming, loving force found in our family stories, which truly are our most treasured heirlooms.

Before the Library Burns

     What he really said was that when an old person dies it is like a library being burned.  I repeatedly misquoted our nearly 90 year old neighbor by saying that an old person is like a walking library.  Both quotes are true.

     Our neighbor, Dick, knows something about everything and so does his wife, Susan. Besides knowing how to live effectively, they know much about history, science, philosophy, literature, religion, mathematics and any other subject you can imagine.

     They are the best of the 1940’s and 1950’s young adults, that have grown old in the 21^st century.  They are always giving to the neighborhood by all kinds of physical help, encouragement and kindness.  They are some of the finest people you would ever meet.

     It is hard not envy them.  Dick and Susan have a loving marriage that has passed the test of time.  They are always together and deeply in love. They are pillars in their church.  They speak with respect to everyone and stop everything to smile and when you pass by their home by car or by foot. 

     Their “olive tree” is full of children, grandchildren and great-grand children, who visit often.  They are definitely the kind of people that young people would want to visit.

     As they sit facing each other, in the warmer months, on the porch  for their breakfast, lunch or dinner, they bow their heads in prayer.  They do their Bible study on the porch, too.

     They host “Welcome to the Neighborhood” parties for new neighbors.  Dick says that the best security system is a good neighbor.  We in the neighborhood feel safe and secure in our home at least partly because of them.  They are not a part of a Neighborhood Watch Program. They are the Neighborhood Watch Program, because they are such good neighbors.

     When Dick was a teenager, he was an American Army private who risked his life in Normandy on D-Day and Susan was a teenager, who faithfully waited for his return.  Now they serve their neighborhood, church, community and country by living the kind of life that D-Day soldiers died to preserve.

     They have a lot to give, share and pass on. They have experienced so much.  We cannot just wave at our elderly family members or neighbors in passing.  We have to go to the “library” to read the book, before the library burns.

Cousin Nancy

           Cousin Nancy was born five years after my mother.  She was about a toddler when her young mother died.  When her dad remarried within the year, he did not want the child to know that his new wife was not Nancy’s real mother.  Therefore, he forbade any contact with his first wife’s family for fear that the truth would come out.

           This was devastating for my mother, who was an only child and had no cousins within a hundred miles.  She was not allowed to acknowledge or talk to her cousin even though they went to the same church and school for many years.  She was not to enjoy the friendship of her cousin, Nancy, a beautiful, sweet and talented girl, and she longed for this relationship.

           Mom certainly had an ache in her heart about this, as I am sure her mother, grandfather and aunt did as well.  They had tragically lost a sister and then they were not permitted to have a relationship with her child. Yet, they saw her regularly.

          Mom never had the opportunity to know her cousin until a mutual relative died and the attorney located Nancy for legal purposes.  My mother, in her late 70’s, seized the opportunity and the courage to write to her cousin a heartfelt letter and invite her cousin, who now lived on the East Coast, to visit her in Central Ohio.  One of the best days of my mother’s entire life was the day she spent reconnecting with her cousin after seven decades. My mother was so happy and genuinely joyful that she had done this. It was a delight to hear he talk about this meeting.  The cousins corresponded for about a year. Then, the letters stopped. Nancy was a victim of Parkinson’s disease and Mom of Alzheimer’s.

         The focus of this blog is this: take the effort today to mend an ache in your heart, to repair a breach, to reconnect with someone you care about. Sometimes it takes courage as it did for my mother, but you will be glad you did.  In doing, this you will likely find JOY!

        When I was growing up my mother would always speak of her cousin Nancy with love and sadness.  Those heartaches can be so painful. When my mother had her second daughter and youngest child, it was an honor and gift of love to name her beautiful and sweet baby (who would be very talented, too) with her mother’s name for a middle name and the first name of Nancy.

Homemade Clothes

 Homemade Clothes

       Mom definitely did not make all of our clothes, but the special ones she made were memorable to say the least.   I am not sure I always appreciated her labor of love as I do today.

       When I was a very little girl, my mother made my sister and me matching dresses.  They were lavender checked gingham and had solid lavender accents.  They had puffy sleeves and a full gathered skirt with a sash that tied in back.  The best part besides the great color was the little purple, embroidered piggy bank pockets stitched on the front of the skirt.  I remember wearing it so proudly. That was my favorite dress that Mom made for me.  My sister, who was younger than I was, got to wear the dress two years.  First, she wore hers, then; she got to wear mine when I outgrew it! I know she was just thrilled…

        The next special outfit that I remember her making me was for a sixth grade winter dance.  All of the girls were wearing fashionable solid light colored or bright colored dresses. (I do not think the other mothers of the girls in my class sewed.)  Mom, wanting to save money, made me a dress from an old formal of my grandmother’s.  It was beautiful for a 6o year old woman, but not for me. It was not that it was just ugly; it was just not in style. It had a black velvet top with short sleeves and a dropped-waist, full skirt made from turquoise taffeta with white stars all over it.  The turquoise taffeta was made into a Peter Pan collar, cuffs on the sleeves and a band around the hip. I even wore a turquoise-with-stars bow in my hair.  Donning my black patent leather shoes and my pink glasses, the look was complete!  I was so embarrassed, but, of course, I could not say anything, because the giver had put so much love into its making.

      

        At the dance, I stood in the corner of the room feeling very out of place.   Along came a sweet boy, who came up to me and said that he liked my dress. I am not sure what negative comment I made, but he said, “I really like those stars.”  Charlie Meng, I will always remember you and love you for saying that!  What a gentleman!

        The outfits Mom made me for seventh grade got even more memorable, because she would use the same pattern over and over to save money on patterns.  The green corduroy jumper with a matching green blouse seemed cute enough to me until I heard that the other students were calling me a Martian.  Maybe it was the matching green knee socks that clenched the look. I had a grey jumper; too, that was the identical style.  I also had a brown and blue outfit out of the same pattern as the sixth grade dance dress. Mom was thrifty. 

        I was glad when Mom started letting me start picking out my own patterns and material.  It was a great bonding time. Eventually, we even got to regularly purchase  “store-bought” clothes.  The great thing about homemade clothing, however, was that you never ever had to worry about someone showing up at school, church or an activity in the same outfit you wore. What a relief!! I was the only sixth grader around with stars all over my dress and the only seventh grader anywhere who was dressed from head to toe in green and not in a Girl Scout uniform.

       

Knot Sewing

Knot Sewing

       Sewing was something that all young ladies did. Actually, it was something that middle aged and elderly women did, too.  My mother had tried teaching me to sew at home, but she thought I definitely needed to take it in school.  In seventh grade, I made a duster with a cap.  Later, in high school clothing classes, I made other articles of clothing that, thankfully, I choose not to remember. 

       It was a chore to sew at home on mom’s machine, because of dropping bobbins, out of control stitching and constant ripping out of knots.  The sewing machine would regularly make horrendous stitching and the thread would break after only making a few stitches. The machine was not a very good one. In fact, it was in terrible condition.  I would get so upset, because the machine just would not do what I wanted it to do.

       I had seen the many beautiful things that my grandmother and my mother had sewn.  I did so want to make those beautiful things, too. 

       One of my first purchases with my teacher’s salary, after the necessary car, was a sewing machine.  It was a symbol to me that I wanted to be a wife and mother someday to make exquisite home decorations and cute clothes for my children, just like my mother and grandmother had done.  In the meantime as I waited for Prince Charming, I could be thrifty and make my own clothes. Certainly, Prince Charming would recognize worth in this.

       There was a time when I make most, if not all, of my own clothes. (I shutter to think of them now.)  I took adult sewing classes. I made a “stretch and sew” red blazer, slacks, many dresses, tops, cushions, and curtains. That was what I was supposed to do. I could be thrifty: I could be domestic.  That was the right thing to do!

       Eventually my new sewing machine started doing the same horrible things that the old machine at home did.  Often, I would go no more than a few inches without the thread breaking, the bobbin dropping, the stitches balling up or the needle breaking. There were knots instead of stitches up and down the seams. Maybe, it wasn’t the machine after all. 

       Then, at some point in time, I realized how expensive the material was, how much time it took to sew, how frustrating sewing was for me, how less than mediocre the items I made really were and I decided to start buying clothes instead of sewing.  It was like a big burden being lifted from off of my shoulders.  The joy of not sewing had arrived! No more knot sewing!  I had found my joy and only a little guilt!