(Originally posted on LiveJournal)
So the last three days have been pretty much filled with shoveling our way through all the stuff in my mother’s house. It seems that as she got older, she got more concerned about keeping “important documents” in case they were needed. I don’t think she threw out a copy of a paid bill, notice of anything, bank statement…. anything. But the habit also became to just put those papers in piles. And my mother’s solution to an unwieldy pile was to buy another container. We may have the market on small tubs and baskets and covered boxes.
But in the middle of all this stuff, we do find occasional gems.
My dad had a knack for, well, better organization of things, or at least better storage. One box contained multiple copies and drafts of his professional resume, and the principal correspondence when he switched jobs back in 1969. There were other interesting papers in the midst of this box, but most of it was the job hunt (both then in 1969, when we finally did move from Michigan to Texas, but also in 1962 – when he’d done some other hunting for a different job). At the bottom of the box was a photocopy of a cartoon that he himself may have drawn. See, my dad was an electrical engineer who worked in power plant design, particularly steam generation (as I understand it, mostly coal & gas burning plants, although in Houston for a time he also worked on nuclear power plant design). So his work days were spent at drawing boards. So the cartoon shows a man standing on a work stool… well, pissing on a drawing board, with triangle, T-square and rolls of plans on it, with the caption under it of “I quit!” My dad was not a particularly demonstrative man, keeping a very even keel in social situations. So finding that cartoon was an eye-opener in several ways — the humor and creative impulse mixed with the anger (Yeah, I can truly say he was pissed off about his Michigan work-place).
There were other fascinating things in the boxes — one of the wedding invitations for his and mom’s wedding, a photostatic (negative image) of a family Bible page with dates of birth of the family members (including my grandmother – Dad’s mother), with an notarized statement from Grandma’s sister that this was indeed from the Barber family Bible and had been in her possession for however-many years. In lieu of a birth certificate, apparently. Baptismal documents for my grandfather and my dad.
Aunt Lucy in India
There are two boxes of correspondence from my Great-Aunt Lucy. She had been a missionary in India for many years. My middle name is for her, so I’ve always felt a certain connection. Besides which, India is a fascinating country. In recent years, I’ve been growing vaguely interested in knowing more about her service in India, as she died when I was six. And now there are these two boxes. I’ll be bringing them home with me, and I think I’ll make a long term project of transcribing and editing these letters. I think there might be enough of interest to get a book out of them. She went to India in 1920, and retired from service in 1952.
Other fun things are letters from my dad’s parents to me and my siblings. Just short notes, and somehow Dad snagged them before they were lost and kept them. I had to chuckle over some of them. A couple of the notes, from when I was about 10, my grandfather, having told me that he knew I was smart, he would pose brain teasers for me. I laughed because … well, nowhere along the way do I recall teachers or my parents sitting me down to tell me I was smart-special. Sure I got good grades, but that didn’t seem unusual – Dad expected good grades from all of us. But looking back from now, I suspect there must have been some testing somewhere there that I don’t remember, and my parents were told I was exceptional. They chose to nurture this by not making a big deal about it, but by making sure I was given opportunities to explore my interests. Grandpa apparently took the news as an opportunity to pose challenges to me. I was ten when he died, but I still remember fondly our visits to Calgary to see them, and me sitting on a footstool by his chair as he sat smoking his pipe. He favored a tobacco that had a sort of cherry scent to it, and I liked to watch the smoke curling up out of the bowl of the pipe, swirling in the glow from the lamp by his chair. He had a twinkly smile. Yes, I know that’s become a literary cliche… but he really did twinkle with humor. He was a tall man, 6′ 2″ at least (my dad’s height), so it was always impressive to the little child to look up at this man who would beam back at me.
As you can see, this task of clearing the house is bringing up a lot of nostalgia, things I’d not thought of in a long time.
But there’s still a lot of work to do, so I’d better roll out over to the house and get back to digging in with my siblings. We’re going to have a very nice Thanksgiving dinner together later (our first all together in a looonnnnggg time), courtesy of Honeybaked — and Mom, who towards the end had a tendency to get a few hundred dollars in cash, put them in envelopes and stow it “someplace safe”. Found money paid for the Honeybaked dinner (smoked turkey). “The last Thanksgiving Mom served us.”
Comments
kalimac – Nov. 22nd, 2007
That’s all fascinating. Did you ever meet your great-aunt?
scribblerworks – Nov. 23rd, 2007
Yes, she and her sisters lived in the same town as we did when I was little. But Aunt Lucy (the last of the sisters to die) died when I was 6. We used to go over to “the Aunts House” Sundays after church, but then they were gone (I wasn’t taken to the funeral, so I don’t have a ceremonial occasion to mark the event in memory).
muuranker – Nov. 22nd, 2007
Wonderful things, as Carter said about the tomb of Tutankhamen. Things of wonder. I expect you will come back to some of what you find in your own creations.
scribblerworks – Nov. 23rd, 2007
Yes, we’ve been rich in heritage, and there are many lovely and fascinating objects from the various households that got folded into ours. For instance, this evening (after our Thanksgiving feast) we found in one box in a closet corner, a box marked “boudoir” – it turned out to be brushes, a hand mirror, cosmetic jars, some manicure tools, and a button hook, all silver (well the jars were lovely glass, but their covers are silver. Tarnished, and they’ll have to be cleans.
More amusing to us was one box marked “family history” — our elementary school report cards (or at least many of them), programs for school music performances, sundries of that nature. We were getting quite a few laughs out of them.
corrinalaw – Nov. 23rd, 2007
Wonderful finds, both from your dad’s papers and your aunt’s letter. What great insight into your dad and those letters sound fascinating.
Thanks for sharing the memories with us.
scribblerworks – Nov. 23rd, 2007
Thank you.
It’s interesting the things you find. This evening, we opened two boxes of what we were afraid were going to be more papers that really had to be sorted. They turned out to be full of maps. Apparently my father never met a map he didn’t like.
It explains my own fascination with maps – I come by it naturally.
jpantalleresco – Nov. 24th, 2007
I hope you had a good thanksgiving. You have a very fascinating family. Kind of shows that for all we know about the ones we love, there are layers we never fully appreciate.
I hope it went well.
corrinalaw – Nov. 25th, 2007
Why do you think maps are so interesting? I like to look at them as roads and wonder who traveled them, though I can’t say I’ve really collected them.
scribblerworks – Nov. 25th, 2007
Why do I find maps interesting? That’s a good question…
The places, the land, the clustering of people. I think my mind, my imagination has always been able to go from these little sketches on paper to imagining the actual phyiscal presence. Even so, there’ve been times when I’ve looked at something like the Rand McNally Road Atlas – which only shows the roads – and not registered why this particular side road might be meandering all over the place. A topographic map would be a good explanation. Heh.
I loved map making assignments in junior high geography classes. Mine were beautiful, neat.
I don’t know if I can explain it better than that. They are like works of art, talking to me. I love maps. 🙂
