Because You Asked For It!

Does anyone else remember the TV show named "You Asked For It!"? I can still hear the smarmy announcer saying, "Well, Maryjane O'Brien, there you have it, the complete story on such-and-such, because YOU asked for it!".

Anyway, as I worked my way through the huge backlog of blog reading I had, I was particularly touched by one that Punkn wrote titled "Chamois Treasures" in which she wrote about her husband's mother leaving both her home and her loved possessions behind to enter a nursing facility. Punkn and her hubby had a heart-rending task of dealing with those possessions which I must say they handled with exceptional grace.

Somehow, over the years, I've been designated as the family historian and heirloom keeper for my family. All the old pictures, the prized furniture and old letters and odds and ends have been entrusted to me - to see that they get passed along to the future generations of family along with their stories (even though they won't be my offspring since there aren't and won't be any). As I commented on Punkn's entry -

A memory came to me unbidden of my Grandmother's old wooden hutch - it was handmade by her Uncle for a wedding present. It's pine and made from rough cut boards and the legs are uneven and it wobbles... the doors on the front do not stay latched as they weren't fitted properly. It sat behind my grandmother favorite chair in her dining room for decades... and now it sits in my dining room, unchanged except it no longer has her so familiar and somehow comforting clutter of papers and odds and ends on it. Rough and ill fitting as it is... it is a treasure I'll never part with.

Today, when the light was about as nice as it was going to get, I took a picture of it to share with you all - particularly with Punkn, because she asked for it.

The picture is a little blurry as I got kind of choked up taking it - but if you look on the top shelf; there is a backbone vertebra from a Dolphin I found on the beach one day, a Tigger Christmas ornament, a wooden sailing ship my Uncle Jim owned, a Captain's head shaving cream mixing mug my grandfather once used.

The middle shelf has a Chinese love lantern I was given when I was in Taiwan by a young girl (I wonder what became of her?), my grandfather's gold watch that he wore for about 35 years (I got the crystal face repaired as it was cracked), a piece of Henry Mercer's handmade tile (you may recall the entry I made on the Mercer Museum), and an Irish thatched roof (china) music box that plays "My Irish Eyes Are Shining" that a high school friend of mine that I still speak to every month, gave to me 32 years ago.

On the bottom shelf is a solid bell bronze frog I cast as a teenager while working at my Grandfather's (and later my Father's) non-ferrous foundry. Hidden away are other treasures - silver spoons, a tea set, my other grandmother's china place settings - none of which are ever used and which I ought to get the tarnish cleaned off someday.

This hutch, being made for my Grandmother's wedding present (c.1922), is nearly ninety years old. I don't know where it will end up after I'm gone - but its never going to leave me.