I'm not a person who cares terribly about material objects. Some of the evidence: I've now written two hundred and fifty essaylets on this blague, and nary a one of them took as its subject a purchase or a possession.
What I've read, what I've thought, where I've traveled, people I've known, yes; what I own, or bought, or didn't buy, no.
But in these last weeks, we're in the process of discarding and giving away while we prepare to move to much smaller quarters. The things we own, and there are too many of them, have been front and center. The general rule here is, "when in doubt, throw it out." But yesterday, I didn't throw away, I packed and preserved.
We have two sets of crockery. The first was part of the 1960 wedding loot. It's a perfectly fine set of dishes, and we've used it on formal occasions for half a century. It's Franciscan china, very 1950s abstract-modernist in design. Entirely sufficient. Why, then, is there a second and redundant set?
Because when I was a boy, my folks owned a handful of pieces of flowery Charles Field Haviland china that came out of storage once a year, at Thanksgiving, to eke out the festive board. I thought, and still think, that these plates were simply beautiful. In addition, because they were so seldom used, they had very specific and warm Thanksgiving-y associations — food and drink and laughter and conviviality — that were once-a-year events in our not-particularly-sociable household. When the folks died, I inherited the Haviland remnants: a few hand-painted plates, some of them chipped; a number of saucers and a few very delicate coffee cups. A decade ago, at age sixty, feeling nostalgic, I decided to make it my business to fill in the set. It wasn't easy. I located a couple of cups at an antique show and by mail-order acquired some plates from a "replacement warehouse" in Georgia. But one day, browsing Ebay, I discovered on auction a complete — serving pieces and all — set of dishes in what I had come to think of as "my pattern." I bid, I was nervous, I won. The design exceeded my hopes. It's a handsome bunch of crockery and it's now standard for our occasional parties and our annual Thanksgiving. We'll carry the Haviland with us to the new home.
What to do with the old? The next generation expresses utter and uniform indifference; the generation that follows is far too young to care. Nor can we sell or discard — there are just too many fond memories. But here's what I'm thinking. Suppose one of the offspring comes to feel, as I did at sixty, an odd longing for objects that carry familial resonance. That set of Franciscan china might become valuable to them. I don't mean monetarily valuable, but genuinely valuable, in the ways that matter.
So I've carefully packed the crockery. It's multi-newspapered and double-boxed. If not preserved for all eternity, it's certainly packed in a way that will outlive every member of my age cohort. It's labeled. It will go into the "storage unit" in the basement of the new condo. It will sit there for an unpredictable but not infinite length of years.
We'll let someone else decide whether to retain or discard.
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