Keeping Stuff For Good
When growing up and playing in the dining room of my grandparents’ farmhouse with my cousins, I remember being told to be careful of the china cupboard because it held all of my grandmother’s china, including tea cups with matching saucers and serving dishes, as well as plates and silverware kept in a particular box lined with velvet. We were told most everything in that china cupboard was kept for good. When I was a little girl I loved sitting in the middle of my parents’ bed and looking through my mother’s jewelry box covered with-yes again, velvet-midnight blue velvet. Everything in that jewelry box seemed to glisten. Gently touching the strands of jewels and stones and rings that glittered, I felt like a princess getting ready for the ball. But there were a few things I’d been told not to touch, like the long, narrow box holding my mother’s pearls and another holding a cameo brooch with matching earrings my father bought for my mother. I’d been told those pieces were kept for...