When I was growing up, my grandma and I would visit yard sales and flea markets and the like and she built up this collection of crystal and glass goblets. Most of them have fancy names. There’s a book that you can find the designs and year and maker, etc…
This is one of them.
For years, the goblets were housed or displayed, I suppose, in my grandmother’s china cabinet. I’d look them over every time I’d visit her house. It was always unspoken that when she passes away, that I would be the one who’d get the collection. She’s still alive and well, but I now have the goblets. They’ve been sitting behind closed doors in my cabinets. I had almost forgotten about them. They are items that I love and I was beginning to overlook them, beginning to not remember their existence except in the abstract or in the sense of…they’re taking up space.
That one thought, one day last week, hit me. And hit me hard. This is a connection to my past, to one of my favorite people, to some of the best times in my childhood where I was with my grandparents and I was safe and loved and I was forgetting about it, I was feeling a sort of UGH! about these tangible memories. This bothered me. A lot.
I’ve been slowly, ever so slowly getting rid of things, simplifying possessions, minimizing. And I wanted to start this early last year when I read the ever poplar, The Japanese Art of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, the same as everyone else it seemed. Now, it usually takes a while for something to sink in and I go in fits and spurts when it comes to actually taking action, but I began and felt amazing and empowered and able to breathe a little easier. And that was only by getting rid of, purging, tossing, donating maybe 1% of things. I still have tons more to go. But I was looking through my cabinets and looking for where I could lessen things and maximize with what would be left and these goblets caught me. We’d been talking about getting new drinking glasses for a while, though hadn’t done anything about it. I have a hoard of mason jars and ball jars and use them from time to time, but… I also have all these gorgeous goblets that have a past and a history and I don’t know them, but I know mine with them and that was the important thing, the important part.
I took one out and began using it for coffee and water. I wanted to see how it would feel. And I loved it. My neighbor said it was fancy. Another friend said it was beautiful and look at that detail! And I found that I loved it again. Loved using it and I imagine that maybe there’s some memory in the glass, in the crystal, in the designs that remembers being of use.
As we age, as belongings age, as things we once held near and dear age or outgrow immediate use, as we minimize and downsize… There are things that matter, things from our past that it’s important to preserve. These goblets aren’t worth much money, but it’s not about the money for me. I wouldn’t sell them if they were. The memory of my grandmother and I looking for them is too precious and I think we sometimes forget things like that when we talk about the past. We’re so eager to forget or rewrite or move on from that we don’t stop to take in what happened, what was, what it meant, what it was for, what came from it, what changed because of it…These goblets have given me a different perspective, or perhaps reminded me of a different perspective.
Miranda Lambert has a song called Old Shit. It’s one of my favorite songs because it’s like these goblets to me… Things out of style. Hand-me downs. Memories. Home. There’s something about preservation that if we let everything go and disappear because out of sight out of mind, more than just a connection with those who came before us will be lost.
Lissa
