Traveling through time

Dec 12, 2011 19:15

This has been a bad year for allergies…particularly for me since I’ve never had them before. I’ve been sneezing, coughing, my nose has been running and I’ve even had a sore throat. I kept thinking it couldn’t be allergies since I don’t have allergies. It must be a cold. I certainly felt feverish. But no, no matter how many times I took my temperature the thermometer showed 98.6.

The thermometer is an old one. It has a thin silver line and you have to turn it just right to be able to read it. This is getting harder since I have to find the sweet spot on my progressive lenses as well as the thermometer. I don’t know when we got it but it’s been with us for a long time. It may have belonged to my husband before we got married. I’m pretty sure that type isn’t even sold anymore. For 20 years, through many moves it’s been with us in sickness and in health. That’s a long time for a slender little piece of glass.

A lifetime ago, my then-husband and I visited my new in-laws. His mother showed me some things that had been in the family for a long time. I had yet to appreciate old things and in truth, there didn’t appear to be anything special about any of it. To me, it was just every day dishes and linens. I thought she was trying to impress me with her frugality. “See”, I imagined her saying, “we make things last a long time in this family.” She took a pair of pillowcases out of a chest. They were just plain white pillowcases, slightly frayed, without embroidery or lace. She told me she’d had them for forty years. I’m afraid I didn’t look particularly impressed and it must have been clear that I wondered why she was showing them to me. She put them away. Show time was over.

It was impossible for the woman I was to understand what she was showing me. Since I had barely lived any time myself, I could not know what she saw as she looked at those pillowcases. I was too young to know what you see when you look at things that have traveled through time with you. Even trivial things like pillowcases or thermometers can carry memories. I saw only an old pillowcase; she saw the little boy sleeping on it.

Everything we have and everyone we know becomes blurred by our experience. We can’t see only the thing anymore. We don’t just see our grey muzzled dog or creaky, sleepy old cat; we see the puppy or kitten they once were and everything in between. That hammer has the shadow of our father; that cup carries the shade of an old friend, now gone.

Of course, not everything carries precious memories. Some things are just utilitarian. My printer doesn’t evoke the wonderful times I’ve had printing out reports and probably very few people look at their wastebaskets with deep affection. But I think most people have things that have value completely independent of their worth. Sometimes these things continue to travel with a family; sometimes they don’t. We’ve all seen things in thrift stores or estate sales and wished they could tell us their stories.

I have my mother’s black iron frying pan and her favorite kitchen knife. She cooked wonderful fried chicken in that pan. She even used it to bake cornbread and biscuits. She would shape them with her hands and fit them in the pan with no wasted space. It was so perfectly seasoned that nothing would stick. She peeled a lot of potatoes and carrots with that knife. Someone made it for her from an old saw blade. It looked crude but it was thin and flexible and she kept it sharp. We would sit at the table and peel vegetables together. She would tell me my peels were too thick; I would tell her her knife was better. The blade has worn away in the middle so it has a pronounced curve. It knew the shape of her hand and together they made many great meals. I keep it in my knife drawer but I don’t use it. I’m afraid I’ll break it. Someday after I’m gone someone will toss it out. And that will be ok. It hasn’t traveled through time with them.
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