There’s something weird in knowing that the location we live in is temporary. In reality, all locations anybody lives in is temporary, at least in a broader, more philosophical sense. But our decision to move “as a family” (two humans, two dogs, and a cat) across the continent “at some point in the nearer future” has made the philosophically ephemeral much more concrete. A lack of a moving date makes it a little softer than most people with my mindset usually deal with, but that’s not always a good thing.
Often, perhaps once a day or so, I look up from whatever I’m focused on, and I stare at an object – furniture, dishes, doo-dads, clothes, pictures – and I wonder, “Will we take that?” I quickly weigh the effort to appropriately and responsibly remove it from our lives (sell it? give it away? donate it? upcycle? recycle? trash?), against the effort to safely transport it with us and house it in a new location (where square footage is an order of magnitude more expensive). And I never complete the weighing.
Instead, I often get lost in reminders of why I have it. Who gave it to us. Why we bought it. What it means to others. What it was used for in the past. Why we will never use it but still own it (oi, that’s a can of worms). I have an example that will likely get me in trouble for posting, but it’s a good one.
I have a set of little tiny glasses. They are gorgeous, but I don’t know what they are for. I’ve never used them or seen them used (they’re not shot glasses, but wouldn’t hold much more, and there are lots of them, enough for a dinner party worth of people to consume a very small amount of liquid in unison – who does that?). I didn’t know they existed until they came into the house. They entered in a box with a set of tea cups that I asked for or somehow otherwise (voluntarily, excitedly) acquired responsibility of ownership for. I wanted the set of teacups, truly, for a single cup.
That cup, from when I could be trusted with very precious things, was always given to me to drink a little herbal tea after fancy family dinners when I was little. When I look at the cup, I remember the stories Grandma told me (every time, I never tired of them) about the cup’s origin, the way the dragon shaped glazing felt on my little fingers, and the picture that shines through the bottom when you hold it to the light after you finished the tea (a very pretty lady’s face, and even she has stories I made up about her, I think my cousin has his own storied he made up before I was old enough to use the cup). That cup is likely responsible for my being a hard core tea drinker and a little bit of an Asia-phile. That cup represents, psychologically, the happiest times of my childhood, at those family dinners with everybody I loved most all in one place, well fed, ready to hug me and tell stories and play games after dinner. That cup is my own personal real-life Norman Rockwell Painting. I know my memories of these evenings are flawed, but I cherish every imagined moment of them. Just like I cherish this cup. We’re talking house on fire, take one possession (after all living beings are safe) kind of cherishing here.
But man that cup comes with some physical and emotional baggage. An entire china cabinet of extremely delicate, very small, very beautiful and very precious objects that are never used worth of baggage. In my head, the family considers the rest of the non-matching set of tea cups (acquired by a multi-generation variety of family bargain hunters at antique stores around the world) to be a single, precious, thing. My sister has a favorite one too (it’s different from mine, but I don’t remember which it is). I know there are stories about the little set of tiny glasses, I just don’t know them – but possessing them makes me responsible for those stories too. It feels like the inverse of the old “for want of a nail, the kingdom fell” kind of thing. Because of a cup, a house is full.
So rather than conclude the weighing of pros and cons, keep or let go, I shake my head and return to my book, breakfast, computer, crocheting, pet, or husband. But to get across the continent, I need to turn the populous cabinet into a solitary teacup, and repeat that action all over the house. Some day my life will be divested of the objects that fill it – I’m lucky to get to choose when, but that doesn’t make it easier to do.
What a wonderful story about the teacup and its symbolic importance to you … I can certainly relate with stories like that of my own, about a cherished object that tells such a fundamental tale about my life (and to the philosophical disquiet about the interstitial realm you inhabit right now, knowing you’ll be leaving but unable to say when).
Makes me think a bit about native peoples, and how their stories are told in the Land — their ancestral Land is their teacup, the trees their grandmother telling them stories of life, the world, the origin of things — and it makes me feel I better understand the deep emotional disconnection (and related problems of family disintegration, substance abuse, fragmentation of culture) that has happened since we took many of these Lands away. As if that special teacup where shattered, and the history of the people whose lives were filled by it.
But I digress…. I was going to say, here’s another thought for how you might handle the difficulty of having to make that choice about what goes and what travels with you when you make the big migration.
Perhaps you don’t need to feel compelled to leave behind some of those objects of great symbolic importance. Instead, if you can’t physically fit it all in the car, or can’t easily take it all with you, perhaps consider entrusting it to someone who will someday return it to you — in your new place. To me, there’s symbolic meaning in such an act too….
I left my precious mandola in Australia, in the care of a couple I considered to be like surrogate parents to me (never had kids of their own, save for their mob of felines they have rescued and work to find homes for; very musically inclined people; have a wonderful collection of antique instruments). I couldn’t take three instruments on the plane back to the U.S. with me, and thought my mandola would be safe there. One day, when I can manage to go back to Australia, I will visit them, and the circle of relinquishment-departure-reconnection will come full circle — and not just for the object, but for the human relationships too.
For the people to whom you might entrust those objects of importance, the significance would be doubled: there’d be the desire to protect your special item while in their care, but also a stronger sense of need to make the trek out to visit you — with the fostered goods like a beacon helping to keep people connected across space and time.
My philosophical contribution for the day
We may end up doing that with the piano, or other cherished object of significant importance. However, whatever it is, we also need to recognize that perhaps that return journey for retrieval may never happen. Or the foster home may reach a point of unsuitability before the retrieval can happen. So mentally even that to me is a goodbye.
The tea cup, that’s small enough I can take with, but I’m pretty much to the point that I could pass it to the next generation for the story to continue. Almost. I think that when I’m not holding it, but then I pull it out and hold it up to the light and finger the glaze and can’t imagine not doing that again. I like the foster-owner idea.
Oh, and I was going to add, about those lovely little wee glasses the uses of which appear lost to time….
You could repurpose them in your own home — for instance, turn them into mini-planters, like this, or this.
I have a weency tiny baby copper teapot that somehow, somewhere along the line I got to add to my copper collection. Wanting to limit my copper collection to stuff I actually can also use, I now use it as a wee little dried flower vase… another idea for your glasses (you could get some of that foam block stuff that florists use in arrangements, and then make your own wildflower or wild grass floral arrangements that you could then place in different rooms, or in a collection on a mantle somewhere… it could be quirky and whimsical if each was different).
You could also use them as fancy cups for when you have to take liquid medicine, or you could determine what quantity they hold — and if it’s something pretty rounded (like ~ 3 tbsp), you could use them as measuring cups for cooking.
My mother has some nice little crystal “juice” glasses at her house … I like the simple etched design, but because they’re so small they never get used. So whenever I’m home, I use them whenever I take liquid fish oil, or I’ll use them on the occasions when I have, say, a New Year’s spumonti.
You could use them as “eye wash cups” — if ever you or someone in the house has an eye infection, or just has dry eyes and needs a rinse.
Just some thoughts!
(and sorry for the long posts…!)
oh no… if they became planters, then I’d not only have the precious glasses to tend to, but tiny plants as well. But your post has piqued my imagination. Perhaps I could use them for something until I figure out how to pass them on to a more appreciative home. I’m envisioning a centerpiece with some of the marbles and pebbles we have. But I’m also envisioning all the dusting and cleaning… It’s a slippery slope! And until we get all the members of the household to understand that some flat surfaces are not for any of our feet, anything delicate stays behind doors or in boxes or otherwise protected by a thumb-requiring package. Of course, I know precisely how to eliminate broken glass/crystal from our lives… But I’m not that desperate. Not yet!
The little crystal glasses are probably sherry or liquor glasses?
that is likely, I’m just not sure what those look like. The ones that J&B have at their house all hold more liquid than these. These are (I think) in between a single and double shot glass. Maybe they’re just metric