My mom refused to allow a party for her and my dad's 25th wedding anniversary because she did not want "any more of that damned silver." About 10 years before that, my widowed grandfather moved in with us. He was great at keeping the knives sharp and the silver polished while he lived with us. A few years later, he remarried and passed on to my mom and dad all of the beautiful family silver collected over the years. My mom tried to convince him to take it with him as a token of her love and affection for his new wife, but the new wife wasn't stupid and she said, "Oh, no! I couldn't let you part with such beautiful pieces! You are much too kind."
After that, the silver got taken out once a year, polished, and returned to the bowels of the dining room hutch. A few years after their silver anniversary, my parents moved to a bigger house, and my mom called a family conference. "I am not going to keep on carrying around things we never use. After we move to the new house, all of you need to come back here and select any items you want. Anything left is going to Goodwill. And I mean it!" Thus spoke the wife of one of the world's great pack rats. And she was believed.
A few weeks later, we all trooped into the old house in search of unwanted treasure. There were old books, magazines and records, one or two quilts, an extraordinary accumulation of broken rosary beads and used missals, a box marked "Uncle Charlie" (presumably containing the last effects of said uncle and not his ashes), and each and every bit of silver my mom and dad owned. I opted for the books and records, and my sister coveted the quilts. My sister-in-law became positively radiant as she realized that no one else wanted a single piece of "that damned silver." She got every piece, although she is far less radiant about it when I drop in these days, only to find her busy polishing all that silver.
What happened to "Uncle Charlie?" I took him home with me, and he is resting peacefully in my attic, or is he in the garage? |
