1999 january 7

momentos

i received two boxes in the post today.

while my parents were visiting my sister, they took the opportunity to go through the last few boxes of my grandparent's belongings. my grandmother died in 1986 and my grandfather nine years later but the disposition of their things has stretched out for years. i come from a long line of packrats, on both sides of the family, but at least we tend to accumulate interesting things. i suppose all packrats think their things special, but ours truly are.

part of the reason it has taken so long to distribute the things they left behind is my mother's insistence on making sure the right things went to the right people for the right reason. the giant brass platter from turkey had to go to my uncle stephen. the collection of silver spoons to my cousin deborah, the marble topped bureau to my sister jubilee, the fishing rods to my brother gaheris. the globe to my brother philip.

i am the recipient of a number of smaller things, since the moments i cherished with my grandmother were the small ones. my grandfather and i had a very complex relationship but nonetheless, the few moments we spent together when neither one of us was irritated with the other are treasured as well.

my grandmother was a southern belle. she had straight as a rail posture and dressed even to go to the grocery. she could make small talk with anyone and volunteered at her church. she raised four children and kept a perfect house, but she seemed to leave all that behind when i would come to visit. she would dig in the mud with me, put on old clothes and decoupage boxes, patiently teach me how to make yeast biscuits from scratch. we would sit on the back porch in the summer evenings and she would light a cigarette from her silver box before regaling me with lazy tales of paris and munich and ankara. then she would listen as i told my childish tales of perth and johannesburg and the islands.

she was the first person i would call when it snowed, the first and usually only one i would call at midnight on new year's. twelve years later i still reach for the phone when i see the first flakes of winter start fluttering from the sky.

having that silver cigarette box is almost enough to make me toss out my resolution to be tobacco free by the summer. in my mind's eye, i can see us, me and gene, sitting on our own porch, blowing smoke rings and telling the stories of our families.

surrounded by stories, claire