Legacy of Things

The pipes burst in my parents’ basement and I helped my mom remove some blankets that had been soaked in a cupboard.

We draped the blankets along the fence to dry outside and as I unfolded them, I recognized them as relics from my youth. Artifacts of another time. Something that I used to know.

As I made slow recognition, my response to seeing them was, “These are… old.” Blankets grabbed on chilly basement nights. Hand-me-down bed coverings, having cycled through several children before they got to me.

One of them was a quilt gifted to my parents on their wedding day almost sixty years ago. Having been tucked away, hidden in a cupboard, it was musty-smelling, tattered, and shredded just about everywhere. Likely too old and fragile to use.

As we carried out the task I found myself wondering why, what was it all for? Maybe it was my laziness asking the question. Or maybe it felt extra relevant to me as I came to it in the midst of what seems like a daily purging practice, taking midlife inventory: Tired of owning things, staring at all my possessions, questioning their value and purpose.

As we engaged in this blanket cleaning activity, asking to what end, I told my mom I wondered if we ought to just throw these out instead. My mom is thirty-nine years older than I. She is in another phase of life but one I believe we both think about often.

She was reluctant, hadn’t considered doing that at all. Still in “purge mode,” I asked her, “Which blanket do you see yourself using? Which of these is worth keeping?” She didn’t have answers.

I asked to take a picture of the wedding quilt. We laid it on the grass to inspect it and, as a quilter, she considered the possibility of recreating one for herself, means to hold onto a memory a little bit longer, even a facsimile of one.

My encouragement—perhaps hastiness— to throw things out does not mean I’m not sentimental. As a young child during piano practice, I remember my mom sitting there to the side, monitoring and guiding, and crocheting, crocheting, crocheting blankets. Afghans, she called them. In fact, I think I only hear that word in her voice. Definite mom word.

Some were meant as gifts. Some were meant to have around—and some, I am certain, were meant as coping mechanisms when sitting with a miserably frustrated child learning the piano. With eight children having endured varying degrees of piano lesson longevity, I wonder how many stress-blankets she crocheted.

Hang on one second.

Note to self: Art show idea: Stress Blankets.

One afghan I have a clear memory of being about as old as me. It is striped brown, yellow, orange, en vogue of the late 70’s-early 80’s. Another I remember coming later, fresh off the piano lessons, a secondary, peripheral memory to the one in front of me as I hammered away at the instrument. As I got older and gained proficiency (or my mom lost the will), she no longer sat near me for piano practice/crocheted blanket time. Away they went from my memory, at least in relation to piano.

That is, until several years ago, when she asked if I wanted them before she got rid of them. Wanting a talisman of my youth, I heartily said yes. I claimed them all. I used them a lot as picnic blankets which might be considered a demotion for a blanket. But we laid the blankets, and the memories they held, on the grass. We ate food on these piano blankets, shared thoughts on them, looked up at the sky on them.

And then we found other picnic blankets that didn’t let grass poke through. And then picnicking altogether became less frequent.

These blankets were already old; now they’re old in a garage. At what point do they go from being blankets of memory to just old blankets? Middle age might mean that along with facing one’s mortality, we also face the mortality of the objects that we have woven into ourselves along the way, threaded with meaning, memory and relationships. I never cared about these blankets as I experienced childhood. Now that it’s gone, I want a token of it. Life is full of paradoxical lessons, like how to let go or hold on tighter.

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In Harry Potter, the dark lord Voldemort, above obtaining all power, is desperate to maintain eternal life. So, by committing evil acts, magically inserts a piece of his soul into random objects that meant something to him once upon a time, turning them into a horcrux. He then strews them about the land, hoping they’re never found, for to destroy them would mean he, too, is finite. As long as they remain intact, so does he.

We want to turn things into a horcrux, I think. Even kids, nieces or nephews, posterity of any kind. “Here, I bequeath to you a bit of me. It’s very important. Keep. Preserve, so that I might live a bit longer.”

But it feels like a bit of a delusion. I know people who do not have children of their own. Who gets their stuff? Are these what children are? Receptacles of our memories? Extensions of us? A safety net for our hopes to preserve proof we existed? How long does that last? With or without children to take them, time most certainly will. Unless we build a private museum providing funds to maintain it forevermore, eventually it will be lost, forgotten, or burdensome.

There’s a fear, I think, of being forgotten. We want to bestow our possessions on younger generations in hopes that they can somehow keep us going even after we’re gone, like a ventilator keeping us around, but not really. We avoid it as long as possible but eventually we have to decide if the physical object in question is the proper vehicle for the memory of truer, more lasting things.

Can memory and meaning be measured? Weighed? Contained? Distributed? My mom has been sorting through old photos-images of people she knows who are strangers to me. I have looked at them and I listen to her stories but they won’t carry the same meaning for me. If she doesn’t write down names, their entire identities will be gone. She even vocalized this, commenting on the seeming futility of it all.

What is the point of all this tracking, keeping, preserving? When we pass things down through generations, how long until they lose their meaning and just become things? Is a forgotten heirloom still an heirloom?

I have a chair that was at my grandparents’ house. It’s velvet and orange and swivels. I love it but I have no memory of it when I was a child. I just know it belonged to them. It’s rickety and wobbly and right now serves as a semi-falling apart reading chair. How long until it becomes just a chair?

Maybe it’s already happened. A relic of a time I never knew. There are no stories I know of attached to it. Can meaning be transferred? A memory passed down? Can I give this chair to my child in hopes he’ll preserve it? What is he preserving? A chair? Or whatever sentimentality came with it? And is this something I want to bequeath?

For all I know, that chair could have been loathed by my grandparents, hardly sat on. Or something they felt indifferent toward. Maybe it was only cool to me—orange and velvet and smacking of mid-century. Maybe there is kinship. Maybe it’s purely aesthetic. Maybe the association to my grandparents, of whom my own memories are few, is a secondary quality. Maybe it’s a tie not enduring enough to tether to, which is probably too much pressure for an old chair. I’m not sure it ought to withstand the weight.

What’s the shelf life of a memory, I wonder. A generation or two, maybe three at most? I have the photo of the blanket that used to be new at a new beginning, that would carry meaning over time, containing a memory no one else was there for. That blanket has lived a lifetime. It’s on its last thread. Is the memory unraveling with it?

How do we keep memories when the things that hold them don’t keep?

I am here to explore these questions and, as I consider what maketh a legacy, I wonder about my own. The longevity of my own memories even feel tentative . I feel as though I’m standing at a crossroads. As I pause to carefully select my path and direction, I am inclined to want to offload whatever might be weighing me down, to ask myself what legacy I might leave behind, and if I want it to be one of things.

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I have this weird sensory need (it’s not that weird) and have since I was young which is this: I can’t stand having dry lips. Dry skin in general drives me a little bit nuts. But the lips especially. So I always, always need a lip balm nearby.

It first started with Natural Ice as a teen. When we went to Lake Powell as a family, even while swimming, I’d fear dry or un-moisturized lips. So I taped a string around it and wore it in the water. Chapstick-on-a-rope. Extra moisturizing with a splash of lake water.

After a while, my lips started to react to it. So, after trying and failing with several other brands of lip balm, I landed on plain old vaseline.

This worked for a time but pretty soon, it started irritating my skin as well.

Eventually I discovered Aquaphor, the baby diaper rash ointment that you can use for basically anything. It’s a miracle of science and has stood the test of time. It makes my lips soft and smooth and I can apply excess on dry knuckles, should there be any. I don’t leave the house without it.

At this point, I have several tubes lying around the house to make it more convenient for myself, and really weird for everybody else. Julian finally noticed the tubes one day,

“Why are these everywhere?? They’re spawning out of nowhere!”

I told him, “It’s so you have something real to remember me by! To help you feel immediately close to me when I’m gone! People have possessions of their loved ones when they die, but you could recreate a whole environment with these when you’re older! You could buy a bunch and strew them all around your house and it would truly be like I was there with you, in every room— peeking out from under the couch, at your bedside, on the coffee table, in a drawer, in your pocket. It would be like having all these manifestations of me. I’m creating a gift!”

By that point he’d probably left the room. He might not get it now but he will one day. Maybe. I don’t know if this would be the horcrux I’d necessarily choose but I think it might be likely. But that’s the thing about a legacy— it’s not really up to us, is it.

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But here is something cheerful and a reminder that though a thing gained can be lost, it still might be worth it.

One of my favorite things to do at Christmastime is hunt for vintage holiday cards on eBay. They bring me such joy and fill me with a kind of borrowed nostalgia that seems to be immortalized in the season. I stumbled on some “gummed” Christmas labels (stickers you have to moisten, like postage stamps of yore) on eBay. My eyes were dazzled and my heart skipped a beat.

It is so strange to take on a stranger’s possession. These were immediately so special to me that I assumed they had to be special to the previous owner in some way. Here is an exchange I had with the seller named Collette:

I already knew these were special and came from another time. Ebay is a meeting place for such things. Seeing the human behind the objects was suddenly as important to me as anything. Adding a bit of the origin story to my own perception of these objects made them all the more meaningful. With the purchase of your possession, I feel the acquisition of history, the borrowing of feelings, of relationships, and, as a recipient or even participant in the process of letting go, perhaps I can carry it—like a torch passed, kept alive.

I will never know these women but I now find myself feeling connected to them both and wanted to express my desire to honor and somehow reassure that this borrowed bit of legacy was in good hands.

She wrote me a note that came with the package. The paper, the handwriting, the words all seem kind of special. Of course, that’s the power of handwritten notes, reminding that there is a person here dedicating a portion of their day to you.

So maybe in weird ways, we can keep alive a legacy— not of things, but through them. But it’s only by sharing with each other the things that matter to us, tangible or not, and not just with progeny, but with anyone we possibly can. Adopted stories, shared memories, people we loved and lost. I maintain the best gift we can give others is our truest, most honest selves. To people we are related to and anyone: Friends. Neighbors. Strangers on the street. Randoms we meet on eBay. And maybe that kind of openness is transferable, causing a reaction that feels like neurons firing between humans. I certainly feel my link to humanity surge more powerfully the more I both share and inquire.

Things don’t last forever. Those blankets will deteriorate completely or simply be forgotten. But maybe I can blow off the dust of previous purpose and turn them into something else, translating and preserving what they mean to me. Seeing them not as capsules or talismans but as symbols and signs of things that are indeed passed down, yet never deteriorate, maybe even expand. In the process of sharing it in a way I know how, knowing full well people don’t last, it could be that something is created that just might live forever.

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