Moving nostalgia around in a circle
We had a combination Mother’s
Day, Christmas and birthday last week at my Dad’s house. When a loved one has recently died, those first few holidays can be rough. It was efficient to have them combined.
Each family member has visited my step-mom Lynda over the past several months but this is was the first time we got together as our family core, the Fab Four, who last gathered Jan. 2 around Dad’s death bed.
The gifts we had intended to open at Christmas were still at the base of the Christmas tree; It’s a plastic tree and twirls when you press a button. My family likes Christmas, and the tree is on display year-round.
We opened the matching pajamas from Auntie Pat, one set for each of us, with a cartoon Santa on the tops and green and white elf stripes on the bottoms. Someone held up the extralarge intended for Dad.
My step-mom is knee deep in moving things around into new places. Dad’s undershirts have been donated, and I took a box of socks to the Jesus Center. You can’t help but notice the pictures of Dad that Lynda has added throughout the house. When you round a corner, you’re face-to-face with a happy moment. She says she may never use the fireplace again — stoking and hauling the wood was his job. But the hearth is where she placed his captain’s cap, surrounded by pictures of Dad on boats or near beaches.
I can understand why Lynda needs to make sense of his things, to keep the dust off the weathered guitar that hangs on the wall in his man-cave. When I go to the garage to grab an ice cream from the deep freezer, I am overwhelmed with nostalgia from the smell of grease from his tools.
And here’s the dilemma. She wants me to have the treasures that I need, those things that will help me feel close. Right now it’s hard to let anything go.
I want the cigar box I remember from his bureau. Inside I found the metal pin that must have been attached to his high school graduation tassel. I want the matchbooks from exotic locations, but my junk drawer in my kitchen is full. I wear his bulky diver’s watch and had the band adjusted so it doesn’t bang around on my wrist.
It takes time to go through the photos of our childhood trips to Yosemite, Dad looking “movie star handsome,” as Auntie Pat likes to say, still not much more than a boy, holding me in tacky ‘70s finery.
When I visit Dad and Lynda’s house, I stay up to the wee hours, looking through Grandma Dorothy’s albums and newspaper clippings. Back then, in the 1920s and ‘30s, Grandma wrote the names of people and places, as well as the date, before pasting the photos onto black paper.
Her hope chest is there, scratched from generations of children who used the cedar chest for toys. Inside we found Grandpa’s carefully-folded memorial flag, the last wallet he carried in his back pocket and a love letter he wrote to Grandma Dorothy in 1941.
I want these treasures as well. Yet, I don’t have children. If I hoard these things in the back of my shed, someone will go through them when I’m an ancient woman. For now, I take photos of the photos and upload them to a shared “vintage Hacking photos” album on Facebook. Lynda said she’ll give me a corner of the garage to help me take more time for nostalgia and decisions.
In the meantime, I need to make some room in my small house. If I move a few things around in a circle, I might find some room for a few treasures on display.