Tag: moving

Patina

Ours is a mobile society. We flit from job to job and house to house without much forethought. It seems we are constantly chasing the “next big thing,” whatever that thing happens to be. For us.

It may be a new job across the country. Maybe acceptance into an academic program in a big city miles from home. It may be that our parents are getting older and we want to live closer, just in case. Adult children start having babies. Many grandparents want to live closer to their grandchildren. Adult children usually appreciate the child minding help.

Everything that is new soon becomes old. It is true that our lives cycle up and down through this unceasing transition. A gift arrives with attendant excitement. Several weeks or even days later, that gift is taken for granted.

Even we were once new and now we are older. Our utility and beauty isn’t as obvious as it once was.

I reflect on the consequences of this mobility in an age where expedience and disposability rule. I have some lovely antique furniture and family dishes. My children will likely have no interest in them. Yet among them, there are old pieces I adore.

My grandmother’s hand crocheted bedspreads. A small porcelain swan with gold tipped wings. I have a beautiful set of antique Korean cupboards. They are intricately carved in Asian designs and outfitted with brass hardware.

The design is complex and interesting. The inside of all the cupboards are papered in old Korean newspapers. Sadly without any dates.

Those cupboards exude an air of an older and more stable world. A patina. They exude the pride of the cabinet maker’s craft. They are sturdy and elegant. The finish is burnished and rich. In part due to the lacquer used but also thanks to the gentle effects of aging.

Old furniture often exudes this elegance. The wood is solid and strong. The joints are well made and reliable. The mirror-like finish has been buffed into a gleaming surface that reflects the image of any of its caretakers.

By contrast, elegant old pieces are 180 degrees away from any IKEA product I have ever owned. I recently did a massive decluttering of furniture and other detritus. Anything IKEA was easy to offload. It broke down without resistance. The cost of replacing it would be less than storing it. My friend Gerry likes to say: “The word IKEA means “junk” in Swedish.”

It is hard to imagine that hanging on to and passing down precious family keepsakes used to be the norm. Young women filled cedar hope chests with linens and special items they planned to use in their married lives.

I remember reading Sigmund Freud’s biography years ago. I was struck to discover, in amongst his many groundbreaking accomplishments, that he purchased an apartment in Vienna as a young married man. He fully expected when he bought it and ultimately lived in that very same building for most of the rest of his life.

That seems unbelievable today. Almost as unbelievable as someone “joining a firm” in their twenties and retiring from the same firm years later.

I am more comfortable living in a hybrid of the old and the new. I like the idea of repurposing old pieces for new uses. I like the comfort of knowing people who lived before me invested their time and talents into creating pieces of utility and beauty. It feels like that aesthetic has been replaced by the mantra of “new and improved.”

It also allows a new generation of young people to define and obtain what they need to fulfill their own preferences and aesthetic. I suppose that is a good thing.

I still cherish the few remaining old pieces I have and plan to hang on to them. My children may offload them when I shuffle off this mortal coil. In the meantime, they are mine to use and enjoy. I suppose there is something inherently healthy in a refusal to be tied to artifacts of the past.

Maybe this new way of managing old things is a practical and necessary response to living in an unstable society marked by easy and frequent mobility. But being older myself, I like to think I have a certain utility and unique patina acquired over many years of living.

I am a hybrid of sorts. Partly stuck in the context of my upbringing while navigating a new world with new rules and ideas. Personally, I feel I have even more value than I did when I was younger. It seems prudent to remind the world and young people about that before someone decides to cart me and my peers off to a landfill.

Report Card

This pitching and packing up party is just about over. I promised I would check in on the results of my big purge and moving exercise.

And I am doing this update on a Monday, instead of the Saturday when I thought I would. The truth is, I wasn’t far enough along.

This has turned into a two-phase project. Part now and the rest next Spring or Summer or sometime in the as-yet-undefined future.

Two shipping containers were emptied during this process as was a storage barn in my backyard. Boxes and boxes and boxes of paper are tucked away in a tidy storage unit. For future reference. And review. How often have I said that over the years?

Clearing out the back shed meant effects only made it as far as the back deck. I learned my stuff was sharing house with a dazzling assortment of critters. Raccoons mostly I determined upon checking the stool samples they left behind.

Sometimes I think I am just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But maybe not. The 23 yard dumpster sitting in my driveway is full to the brim and will be hauled away tomorrow to make way for a smaller dumpster. For those things I have yet to toss.

There were some sad discoveries. Beautiful Italian leather shoes ruined by dampness. I would never have worn them again anyway. Random papers and receipts congealed and stuck together. At least it was an easy decision to throw those out.

Tomorrow the “deep” cleaners arrive. I can hardly wait. These are cleaners of the “I do windows and baseboards” variety. They are a dying breed and I’m lucky to have found them.

With all this detritus leaving my life, I am both relieved and a little scared of what will replace it. Naturally we all hope there will only be good things ahead which is unrealistic and unwarranted optimism.

But among the lessons I am taking forward from this hideous sorting, tossing and packing up exercise is that I will not have to face at least half of this ever again.

It was too much to hope that I could clear out every corner of my boxed up life in one go. But I got this far and I made real progress.

Maybe real progress is enough.

Collections

When I was a young girl, I collected post cards. Old ones mostly. It started when I came across a few old ones at my Nanny’s house. She let me have them and, from there, my collection grew.

There were lots of soppy old post cards. They must have been used for courting or keeping love alive. Full of romantic sentiments and wreathed in ribbons and flowers and birds. There were lots of birds.

There were several old-fashioned tourism post cards, too. One of Niagara Falls, I remember. Others of “Southern belles” who worked as window dressing and guides at Southern plantations. Beautiful young ladies clad in elaborate hoop skirt dresses in multiple colors, with perfectly coiffed hair. Usually blond.

Before I was a teenager, my post card collection disappeared in one move or the other. I miss it. It had grown to be about 6 inches thick with an elastic band wrapped around it. That’s a lot of post cards. I think it would be fun to look at them again and ponder the different eras that generated them.

Humans are great collectors. There is something pleasing and sometimes instructive about the order of collections. I think about butterfly and other bug collections we see in museums or old books. Or china collections, like a certain pattern we favor or maybe a variety of tea cups we have accumulated.

Collecting has something to do with our values and what matters to us. My Dad was famously unsentimental about holding on to anything. From about the age of 11, I had started collecting flotsam and jetsam from my life in a wallpaper book.

Wallpaper used to be sold from huge bound pattern books that most paint stores carried. There were large desks set up at the end of paint aisles where you could thumb through them and choose what you wanted.

Paint stores would often lend out the pattern books so you could take them home to check how the pattern would look in your home. When the patterns were discontinued and no longer available, the books became redundant. Paint stores were happy to give them away.

So one of these discards became my precious possession. The thing was about four feet by four feet and awkward to carry. It had a thick plastic carrying handle at the spine. For several years, I put all the precious accumulated things of childhood in that book.

Report cards. Birthday cards from relatives. Ticket stubs. Artwork I wanted to hold on to. Pictures of friends, family and events of interest in my life. Newspaper articles about an event I’d attended or that interested me.

It is still painful to remember the circumstances of its demise. Dad had moved from an apartment to his “forever” home while I was away at college. In the course of the move, my wallpaper book full of childish memorabilia was garbaged. It had been in the closet of the bedroom where I stayed when I came to visit.

I heard Dad report on its fate with a mixture of numbness, horror and despair. “What was done was done.” No histrionics or tantrum would have effected its return. I remember interpreting Dad’s act as a discard of me, or at least what mattered to me. It was a lifelong pattern. As many men of his era did, my interests were of little import compared to his pursuits. I loved my Dad, but remember telling a high school teacher: “I don’t think he is very good for me.”

His carelessness about taking care of things that mattered to me was a more general disregard for me personally and my pursuits. I expect it was projection. Dad had little self-regard so how was he going to extend that to his issue. It took years to develop my own internal cheerleader to sustain a belief and commitment to things in life that were of value and interest to me.

I have only a few, small collections now. A china pattern called Blue Eva Opulent by 555 Fifth Avenue. The pattern is discontinued so the pieces I have and ones that come up at auction are rare. I collect white china pitchers, too. This was a nod to my Aunt Anne who started me with my first one when I was a teenager. I have several ornate porcelain teacups that I keep simply because they are so fancy-schmancy.

And rocks. I love rocks. Pretty, little ones mostly that you might find on a beach walk or in a riverbed. I have bought special rocks in tourist and science shops just because they were beautiful and interesting. Hematite is a good example. If you’ve ever come across this shiny onyx black magnetic rock in your travels, you may understand the appeal.

I don’t know what that little blip of excitement is when you find something new to add to your collection. Perhaps it is because you know the pieces are rare and beautiful and pleasant to look at and handle. It is a peculiar vanity. These collections will be dispersed when I am no longer here to manage them.

But like other favorite pursuits on this planet, they are an enjoyable distraction and occasional preoccupation. They are not vital or necessary in the grand scheme of things by any means.

Similar to many human pursuits, building collections can bring life joy and just be a personal bright spot. For that reason alone,