Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I have furniture.

My great grandmother's furniture, my grandmother's furniture, my mother's furniture, and yes, even a little furniture of my own. It was not ever my ambition to inherit and have all the furniture in the houses of my childhood but nevertheless, I did inherit it and spend a great deal of time and effort caring for these beautiful pieces of the past. I don't think my mother and my grandmothers plotted against me by appointing me as their successor but I do think they all knew that I was the responsible one and their furniture would be safe with me. And their furniture was very, very important to them. The last thing my mother said to me in a coherent state was "I know I can count on you to take care of everything and everyone."



Such a legacy. It's full extent was revealed to me only several years ago. I had decided to have some hardwood flooring laid in the house and had to take the furniture out of several of the larger rooms. It all had to go. So I hauled it out to the very large front porch we have here at Bellemaison and stacked to the rafters, the second story rafters; pieces and pieces and pieces of wonderful, lovely well-appointed furniture piled high on the front porch.

And I don't want to neglect to say that I am grateful to come from women with such lovely taste and such lovely home-centric ambition. I am grateful. My eye has well-developed muscle that was built at the knee of my teachers--my mother and her mothers. But as I surveyed my luscious empty rooms stripped of all the mahogany, cherry and walnut, I realized I wanted to get organized once and for all and put the furniture back in an arrangement that made sense for me and how we live here in the hopes that it would be much easier for me to care for.

Obviously, some of it had to go. So I began to select and isolate pieces to give to my daughter, PDX Pup. I ended up with a well-filled corner of the front porch: end tables, chairs, music cabinets, lamps, just wonderful stuff that I had loved and They Before Me had loved that the Pup was now to love. And she would love these things! I was so tired that I did not realize until the next morning as I glanced back at the Pup Corner on my way out to my car what this assortment of well-crafted hardwood really meant; the Pup had come of age and was being called to claim her legacy: take care of everybody and everything. She had gotten her new job description and a mighty one it was at that as the Pup lived in a very small apartment at the time. I climbed into my car and rolled down the driveway realizing I was starting the cycle all over again, as many, many well-meaning mothers and parents have done since the beginning of time; passing on what they'd been given to the untired, unlined, fresh eyed future of the gene pool . Soon The Pup would have a mammoth conglomeration of household possessions spanning four generations, just like me, and soon she'd fret about keeping up with it all, just like me. And she was just a baby, barely old enough to live away from home. But come to think of it, I was younger than her when I got the same job description. How the times flies.

I worried about it all day at work. You want a different life for your children; you pick the good things about your own life and childhood and pass them on to your children. But then you find some really, really good new things that weren't in your childhood to give to your children so they will have a better childhood and a better life; you want only the very best of everything for your children and in the simplest of terms, you want your children to have a better life than you did. That's all. That's really all it is. They should have a better life than you. Once I came around to that simple ambition that lies in the heart of every mother, I knew what I had to do.

I went home and reorganized the front porch, grouping like-kind items. Chairs with chairs, lamps with lamps, tables with tables. The Pup Pile was no more. Then I placed an ad in the newspaper and began to clean and polish all this furniture for the last time. Then I sold every bit of it. All of the furniture that I had been in my family for so long. New people came to get this furniture and take it home to their families; they were thrilled to get this furniture and I knew it was going to a place where it would be loved, as it had been loved here.

I now had an empty home and it was time for me to make this home my very own, and write myself a brand new job description. So I began, filling my home with the things that had meaning for me. And I rewrote my will, too. Instructed my children to sell whatever furniture, art and possessions of mine they didn't want or need, with no guilt or responsibility; as I had loved and wanted each piece here and had a marvelous time with every bit of it, as they should with their own homes and their own possessions. It's only stuff and my ambition for my children is that they not be burdened by leftovers and remnants of my life that may serve to burden them instead of bless them. Now, then, and always it has been and it remains my intent to bless my children.

So I suppose you are a cold hearted person to sell you grandmother's dining room set. I still have my mother's dining room set, though . In storage. I'm not that brave nor that cold. I kept Mom's because of the memories of my Sunday job--pulling the dishes out of the hutch and and setting the table every Sunday after church. And on Saturdays, I dusted and polished the chairs. That maple furniture and I go back; we worked together for a long time. And after all is said and done, still I have the bedroom furniture of my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and my childhood. It turns out that I'm not that enlightened after all.

But the light and grace in my life is not the dressing tables of the women who defined a very large part of me but the husband who tends this furniture in storage and hauls a miscellaneous piece here or there from time to time without complaint; the light and grace in my life is my daughter who pats my hand and says, don't worry; when the time comes, you'll know exactly what to do with all of it.

And these are the things that I will take with me and carry in my heart to where I go next. What I will leave, hopefully, is my belief that we all care for each other and our own self as well but that the care and responsibility for family doesn't rest with one person. We don't pile up the obligation for a family's legacy and give it to one person to handle. We all handle our own stuff. And try, each and every day, to make things better for whoever is up next, keeping only the good things and finding really good new things to add to what we leave behind.


JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA

11 comments:

Julie said...

I liked this Jbelle. In my home the same is true. When my mother passes, each of my sisters and I will receive one thing that has been passed down from my grandmother (she came to this country without anything but a 1 year old baby) and one thing from my mother; as I will do when I get older.

JBelle said...

:) It's what women do, I guess Julie. I wonder, pretty much doubt, that my children will want my stuff and I have sooooooo much. (wincing)

Christy Woolum said...

This post was very nicely done. I love that you have surrounded yourself with the things you love that represent your family. We are alike in this way. I linked your blog to mine on my post today when I wrote about my hydrangeas. A person can't read about hydrangeas without seeing your post!

JBelle said...

I know that, Mrs. Roosevelt. I love *how* you love your family. The other day I was driving down Hamilton and looked up, took a very quick right on Bridgeport and drove over to Division. In honor your grandma. :) Even if I have NO idea where she lived.

MarmiteToasty said...

I love that you have pieces from your past family.... I would dearly love to have something, anything, even a photo.... but alas I do not...

Maybe that is why I have kept a 'growing up box' for each of my boys..... filled to overflowing with as many photos and 'things' of their growing up years.... nothing grand, nothing worth anything other then memories... but its a start, for future generations.... I hope..

ok, why has your post bought me to tears...

x

PDX Pup said...

At least I got some good stuff, like grandma jo's kitchen table and the hutch with the piece of glass Ben and I broke with the wiffle ball bat at the old apartment. ;

JBelle said...

Mel, I have sooooo much, so many things of my family that I was suffocating. Too damn much of a good thing and too much responsibility lumped at my feet. It held me motionless. I want my children to be free and remember breakfast together, how we worked through illness and death, what we did when we got unexpected good news and how much, how much I loved them, even though I was a wholly imperfect person.

JBelle said...

That hutch, Pup, oddly enough, was not a family piece. But a piece from Pom's gun shop partner that he had put out at the curb for the trash and I took on my way home one night when I was in high school. And it's actually a music stand and it was in my room at IDAHO. At the Pi Phi house!

JBelle said...

I had Nana's kitchen table and gave that away, too. sigh.

Christy Woolum said...

I am touched by your story of driving down Bridgeport. The address is 717. Now is does look better with a white picket fence. I feel blessed that I have always had my family. Can you imagine being alone in the world. sigh.

Carla said...

What absolute wisdom. I think you got it right. But I do like the history in those old things...but select pieces.