Friday Fun is a group post from the writers of the NHWN blog. Each week, we’ll pose and answer a different, writing-related question. We hope you’ll join in by providing your answer in the comments.
QUESTION: We all have those ‘things’ we cherish that may not make sense to the rest of the family. What is your most prized mundane possession? Why do you value it so much?
Diane MacKinnon: My Rollerblades. The first time I saw people Rollerblading in Central Park, I thought “I could do that!” When I got my refund check from the IRS the following spring, I walked to the skate shop in my neighborhood of Brooklyn and bought a pair. I put the Rollerblades on my feet, put my sneakers in the box, and skated home. The next day I put my new skates on, clomped down the stairs of my third floor apartment and headed to Prospect Park. I did three loops of the park before heading home. It wasn’t until I was heading down hill toward Grand Army Plaza (huge rotary with many, many speeding cars) that I realized I didn’t know how to use the brake. I decided to fall before I hit the traffic and the next day I practiced using the brake before I headed back to the park. My Rollerblades symbolize being in the zone to me, hard work that feels like play. Freedom and joy. Can’t wait ’til my son is old enough to join me in my flight!
Wendy Thomas: I am a collector of all things little. Sitting by my desk I have a little jester doll I picked up in London, a tiny Waldorf Fall witch doll, a glass chicken (or two) and some glass stars in a small clay pot upon which to count my blessings.
I realized early on that I am very tactile. I stink at recalling things from memory (I pray I am never asked to recall details for a police sketch “well, um, he had a nose.”) but if I’m holding something from that memory, a pebble, a postcard, I can remember it all, in vivid detail.
I tend to favor items that hold a little bit of magic. The memory of a perfect picnic, a vacation where I discovered something new about the kids or myself. A trinket someone gave me in time of need. One single favorite? Couldn’t choose, they all combine to form a tapestry of my life.
Lisa Jackson: Fun question, And since I’ve twice downsized my living space dramatically in the past 5 years, there are a couple of things that leap out at me. One in particular is my high school jacket. I loved high school – the learning aspect, not the bullying or peer pressure – and I loved our mascot and the school colors. I didn’t letter in any sports, as I was a lot more nerd thank athlete type, but I got a beautiful jacket when I could and I still have it.
It has my first name stitched on the left side, the high school name, and beautiful mascot image on the back. The exterior is in primo condition, the interior, not so much, and it no longer fits. I don’t keep it in a storage container like most people probably would. Nope. I have it (always) hanging in my closet with all the coats I do wear.
I love the memories it brings back of the option to attend classes year-round (which I did) and graduate a year early (which I purposely did not). It reminds me of so many great things that I have to hold on to it and keep it in sight. I like seeing it and having some flashbacks. I have no longing to relive those years as a teenager, I just cherish the pleasant memories and continue to let the not-so-fond memories fade away. Call me crazy, but taking summer classes 3 years in row absolutely rocked for me. A time to explore and try courses that I normally wouldn’t have.
Deborah Lee Luskin: Reading Diane, Wendy and Lisa’s replies each push memory buttons for me. I don’t think I have any ‘thing’ from high school – and I’m not surprised. What I took from those years was how to swim upstream, against the current. A great lesson, though not easy, and not one that allows for baggage. Like Wendy, I have small souvenirs from great expeditions. These are mostly small stones from mountain tops and valley floors, but include a fair number of seashells as well. Of these, the one that gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling every time it turns up is the small snail shell my eldest daughter gave me when she was eighteen months old and we were in Maine. It’s the first gift from a child, and prized. But like Diane, I own one object that puts me in “the zone” and is very special, indeed: a rowing single, made of kevlar and mahogany, purchased when I turned 50. It’s called Rose One, named after both the feisty female character in Into the Wilderness, and because it is a homonym for what it does: rows one. A boat of my own. And every summer morning at dawn, I take it out on the Connecticut River and bliss out in hard work and natural beauty.
Julie Hennrikus: My much beloved grandfather taught me how to play cribbage when I was very, very young. Actually, he didn’t teach me, he taught my parents and I watched. And then I asked if I could play. With the patience of Job, he said yes. And so it began, a shared hobby with one of my favorite people. My grandfather build things for his grandchildren, and may of them have survived. But my favorite item is a cribbage board made out of a bed slat. The holes are hand drilled. At the end there is a larger hole for the “pegs” covered with an piece of aluminum that swings out on a large screw. And the pegs are nails. I have one of the boards, my parents have one, and my uncle has one. None of us use store bought boards, we all use the bed slat boards. My grandfather died 31 years ago, and I still miss him. But his cribbage board lives on.
Susan Nye: When I first read this question, I thought, “I got nothing.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m a bit of packrat and have more than enough stuff, too much actually. It was the oxymoron that stopped me in my tracks. How could anything prized be mundane?
I have lots of favorite things and none of them are mundane. One of those favorites is my dining room table. It’s an old farmhouse table which I bought when I lived in Switzerland. I love it because it is beautiful. But more important, I love the wonderful evenings shared around that table with family and friends .
Jamie Lee Wallace: Treasures? You’re kidding, right? My house is a veritable museum of treasures. I have baubles and artwork and homemade creations filling every nook and cranny in my tiny, 300 year-old house. Between my daughter (who seems to have inherited my manic need to collect things) and me, our collection is quite impressive. The “nature shelf” alone holds enough stones, shells, feathers, sticks, and other natural gems to make people wonder if we’re a little odd in the head. Add in my scattered collection of miniature sculptures in clay, stone, iron, wood, etc … well … you get the idea. I adore all these small trinkets. They remind me of moments and days and dreams. Each one holds a story or the possibility of a story, and the journey to collect and curate them is a story in itself. Here is a picture of one of our groupings arranged in an antique type tray:
my pictures of family and our life. Most important things come and go and get lost moving here to there…But our pictures our the memories and hold everything dear to us…people
My memories, that’s all my wife and I have left, a flood inundated our house 10 years ago, destroying everything on the inside. Cherish the photos and videos, we have none left of our earlier lives, wedding or children. But we do have the memories.
Bulldogsturf – How horrible! Keep your memories safe – S.
I know it’s cheating but as I get older it’s the pictures and memories I keep in my mind.that I treasure most – No thing comes anywhere near their value, though some things do help keep those memories and feelings alive.
Enjoyed reading all of these pieces. I cannot think of any physical item that I cherish. Funny,really,when I spent so many years buying stuff. Like my computer as it keeps me connected to people…..the ipad2 is easy to use also. Need to have a keyboard to do posts, so my well used laptop is probably well cherished and needed!
I was struck by Wendy’s comment, “I tend to favor items that hold a little bit of magic.” My most prized possession is a collection of letters from 1943. My great uncle enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age 39. It was his first time away from home and the relatives wrote him reams of letters. They filled the pages with details about their day-to-day lives: the activities of the children, the new linoleum floor in the kitchen, the trips to town, the elderly family doctor seeing patients for the younger doctors who had gone into service, and the military planes flying overhead on their way to Wright Patterson in Ohio. To me, this is magic –to feel the echoes of the love and support of this very close family, to learn intimate things about their everyday activities, to read the thoughts and personal opinions of people who are long since gone, some of whom I never knew. Those letters are time capsules and I cherish them.
There are so many things, all have special family connections. One of my favorites, my collection of stones from Denmark, everytime one of my family members visits there they bring back a rock for me, so I can feel apart of my ancestral home.
The only possesion that I would grieve over is my violin. I played through high school and college, then stopped for almost twenty years as I built my career and family. I began playing again five years ago, and it was like finding a lost piece of self. The planes and curves of the fingerboard are well-traveled, and my fingers know the terrain. Music is the way I tell stories when I can’t find the words, but playing with a different instrument would be like writing in another language.
Mobyjoecafe – Congratulations on finding your violin again! How wonderful. Thanking for sharing. Take care – Susan
I am sort of a cross between Deborah and Jamie Lee! I have lots of rocks, some of which I have painted. I also have lots of knickknacks, each with a story on my personal prayer/meditation altar. Little, strange objects with a story behind them are just the best tiny treasures.
I have a collection of heart-shaped rocks from hikes. I’m not really partial to heart-shaped things, but for some reason, one day on a hike (many years ago) I picked up a rock and sat down to look at it. When I saw it was heart-shaped, started thinking about how it represented life. We have the option of becoming bitter and hard from challenges, or becoming solid, like a rock and able to endure. I thought of all the things a rock must go through – the tumbling and jumbling it must make and all the things it comes into contact with to eventually end up being chipped and/or polished into a heart.
I have a bucketful – some from short hikes, Some from the top of 4,000 foot or better mountains. I have one large one from Odiorne Point, with barnacles on it, that sits on my mantel.
Funny, isn’t it, how most of the things we hold as prized are not really of any real monetary value?
The other thing I value is my grandmother’s rosary beads, made of wood. I am not particularly religious, but every now and again I wear them as a necklace and I touch them the way she touched them, and I think of the memories.
It was nice reading what everyone cherishes! Many made me smile.
Laura – sounds lovely. Until recently I had my grandmother’s locket. Her mother gave it to her for her 16th birthday … she gave it to my mom on her 16th who gave it to me. When my niece turned 16 – I passed it on to her. Thank you for sharing, Susan
Comment on Prized Possessions. I have a printers rack (actually 2 of them) that look exactly like the photo being used in this Friday’s article. They are my prized possessions. Each cubby has something pertaining to my life or my family’s life. From my Scottish Grandfather’s prized pocket knife to a dart that my Mother used in competitions to a piece of the Berlin Wall….evry item is precious and means something. There are so many different and odd items in these printers racks that sometimes even words cannot describe why one would save “that”. My daughter’s first lost tooth…a small vial of earth and sprig of heather from Scotland (my birth place)…a matchbox version of a TR3 (aaah, my first most unreliable car)….a poppy for Rememberance Day (November 11th) given to me in Grade 1. My printers racks are a snapshot of my life…pictures without words.
nmberlin – sounds lovely – many thanks for sharing! – Susan
My prized possession: An old old English sheepdog named Inez sits in the entry of our home. Never one to do things by degrees, my mother had aquired not one but two old English sheepdogs. She also had a toy poodle. Incidently, the poodle had been bitten by the female sheepdog. As a Christmas gift, in the 1970′s, I painted an 18″ statue of an old English sheepdog. When Mother opened the gift, her poodle took one look and promptly left the room. Mother always kept that dog on prominent display. Her youngest brother, who lived in Nebraska, loved that painted canine. When Mother died she left the statue to him. I later learned from my cousin, my uncle had to stop a lot to relieve himself on the way home from Mother’s funeral. He blamed having to stop so often on the dog… that he began to call, Inez, after my mother. When my uncle died a few years later, I asked my cousin if I could have the dog to take home. As I placed her in the trunk, an aunt made the remark, ” I always thought that dog was atrocious.” Of course, she didn’t know I’d painted it.
Saranell – what a great story – thank you, Susan
My journals.
Something my family finds unusual… The sewing machine I recieved from my parents at my wedding. It’s a simple Singer that I have hauled all over (across the pond and back) and must have ‘near’. Why is that odd? Because I don’t sew. It’s something I really want to learn and see myself doing… Its something given to me by my mom who has since passed – and who wondered if I’d ever use it as well. I have made one shirt over the past 22 years I’ve owned it… But I will! Someday Soon I will!
One of my most prized possessions is probably my first teddy bear. I love him sooo much. He has been across the country and across the world with me. He is starting to become a little torn up but all the better, just means I’ve loved him as hard as possible. He has kept all my secrets and I keep all of his. I’ll love him another 30 years whether he has any limbs left or not.
This is a fun subject. At first, I was going to list my Grandparents’ foot stool that they made together; a tapestry on the top and a hand carved long sloping wood piece. Then I thought of my Grandmother’s embroidered cross that she had left over from her days of sewing altar cloths but my family know that they are valuable so I pick my old Girl Scout knapsack that I got as a child. It is mundane and is covered with pins and patches from all the places I visit and activities that I participated in. It is literally so crowded now that when I went to the little local Girl Scout shop recently to register my Mother for their 100th anniversary, I got a little pin and couldn’t find a space for the life of me. Finally, I found an appropriate place next to Smokey the Bear and above the patch of the San Diego Zoo. Thanks for letting me write; that was indeed fun.