Touched

We Southerners don’t give much thought to being raised in an orphanage; we’ve always been surrounded by family. It’s who we are. But imagine for a minute that all those family members are a mystery to you.  The concept got me thinking about something we all need to do. Something so important in our family history, I’m embarrassed to say I never thought of it before yesterday.  But yesterday, think of it I did.  And I decided to take action.

There comes a times when you realize your surviving parent won’t be alive on this earth forever.  I mean we all know that already, but one day, the reality of it will really hit you deep in your belly, will render you faint, and take you to your knees.  Last Sunday, a friend at church shared with me that when her surviving parent passed away, she knew for the first time in her life what it feels like to be an orphan.  I never thought of it that way, but it made a lot of sense.

So let’s say your last parent is gone, and you’re now left to sort through all their belongings, decide what to keep and what to let go.  That’s what made me realize: I don’t know the family history of many of my mother’s cherished antiques, accessories, and sets of bone china.  I don't know who's hands have touched them or whose lives the antiques have touched. What did Mom buy through the years and what came down in the family?  I’d never paid attention, but there’s a reason.

I grew up with warehouses, storefronts, and homes filled with English and American antiques.  Daddy's family were antique wholesalers who imported container loads of antiques from England, and bought estate lots of American antiques throughout Georgia and Alabama.  All the homes I grew up in were decorated around English, Colonial, and Early American antiques, and Mother still has a farmhouse full of them right here in Bville.  It also occured to me that when Mom married Pop, her second husband (Daddy died young), some pieces came into the family with him -- he's a decsendent of the Hatfields of West Virginia (yes, the same ones who feuded with the McCoys for generations.)  Which ones have been handed down in our family, which came down through his, and which were acquired? I haven’t a clue.  So I set out to learn and record the provenance of each piece that by fate, ended up in my Mom's and Pop's home, and under their dominion.  There are hundreds of items to be entered. It’s going to take untold number of hours, and fill several journals.  Time to begin.

To be continued…….