Is anybody out their tired of the wind? The wind howling, blowing thru your hair (straight up), combing thru said hair after being outside for 2 seconds. Blowing you off balance when all you want to do is make it to your car, or in the case of the husband wrestling a sheet of 4×8 drywall into the garage after a purchase at Home Depot alone. How about opening the door to the restaurant only to discover you have to pry it open or worse, opening the car door only to have the wind take it and slam into the car next to you! I got lucky just in the nick of time. I’m calling uncle! as I listen to it out my office window. We have had no spring. If it’s warm it’s windy, if it’s cold it’s windy. Can’t rake because of the wind, can’t plant because it’s still too cold and I don’t think my flowering crab is going to bloom I think it’s going right into leaf mode and it has never done that. It had buds in February and of course we’ve had several freezes since then. Time will tell. I know that by this time last year I already had the yard cleaned up and I was starting to make my way to the nurseries to investigate. We are so dry here that it seems every drop of rain evaporates before it hits the ground. Ok enough complaining!!! At least we aren’t on fire. Yet!!!
Do you have Sterling Silver? Is it special to you, remind you of Sunday dinners at grandma’s, or is it a noose around your neck that you haul around from home to home only to sit in a box under the bed! (Let me know in comments) I recently made the hard decision to part with some of mine. Not because I needed the money but because I had more than I will ever use. Let me tell you a story about my Sterling Silver because I just got the nicest text from the gal that purchased it from me.
I was a very young bride 19. Yikes, I can’t even imagine this now, but we were young and in love and made it work. That’s a whole other story. My mother’s sterling pattern was Grand Baroque. She chose it not because she loved it but because at the time (my dad won it, he was a sales man) and the two step mothers suggested to the young mother that she should pick the pattern that was most valuable and at that time it was Grand Baroque. So following their advice and not her heart that is what she chose.
During the time I was planning my wedding I told my mom it was ok for my sister who is 6 years older than I am to have the Grand Baroque because it was way to much fussy stuff for me. I hated it! Mom’s suggestion to me at the time was to pick a really good stainless pattern because I would only get hit and miss pieces of sterling because it was so expensive. Following her advice that is what I did. I was always content with that but between kids and company I was running out of silverware, so in the 80’s I added some pewter to my repertoire. Mom was secretly comfortable with this because she new that she would eventually inherit her mothers sterling which they had picked out together. It was Butter Cup and mom decided that she would give that to me. I never knew this. The Butter Cup disappeared and never came her way. She was very upset about this. I was fine. Many years go by and she inherits her step mother in laws sterling Sir Christopher. She is content, I will have Sir Cristopher and all is good! I could have cared less. That too was way too much fussy stuff for me. So for several years I sit at a table with Sir Christopher knowing that gee someday this will all be mine! A noose around my neck!!!
Fast forward again, and I lose my grandmother and low and behold the sterling has to go back to the nephew because it is in the will that way. Now my poor mom is in a terrible quandary. What to do. Does she take her Grand Baroque out to 12 knowing that I don’t like it but then we can each have 6 or what to do. I didn’t care.
We always spent Thursday together and on many of those Thursdays “the arbiters or good taste” as we dubbed ourselves, would go shopping and see what was out and about at the local shops. This conversation about the sterling kept coming up for about 3 weeks in a row.
I finally said “Mom, if I have to live my life without sterling silver it is ok, don’t worry about this”. Then the next Thursday we were in Dillard’s when they used to carry sterling and mom said, “Let’s go to the china department.” Ok I’m always game to look at china but she took me to the sterling and she pointed out a pattern. She said, “What do you think about that one?” I said “Well, that’s Francis the First.” I totally caught her off guard and she said “How do you know about Francis the First?” I said, “Because it’s always been my imaginary sterling pattern. I never told anyone but I picked it out when I was a bride.” “Oh,” she says. End of conversation.
The next Thursday she is waiting for me at the door. She opens it and grabs my hand and takes me to the dining room table. On that table are 8 place settings of Francis The First. In typical mom fashion she says to me this is yours but you can’t have it until I’m done with it! It had always been her secret favorite pattern too. So for many years I admired it at her table and I would buy her gifts of pieces I would like to have soup spoons, butter spreaders. Then I decided I would need 12 place settings eventually so I started collecting my own. My folks would buy me pieces for birthdays etc. So I was up to 8 place settings of my own. When I lost mom 3 years ago of course the Francis the First came home with me while the Grand Baroque went with my sister. My secret drawer is heavy and I have no need for 16 place-settings. With everything I have in silverware, stainless, pewter I have 64 place-settings of stuff!
I knew the day was coming when I would need to part with some of it. It just wasn’t necessary with my small family and living in my small house for me to have so much. So last week I listed 4-6 piece place settings and I’m so happy to say they all went to the same buyer. I just received a text from her, she lives in OK, and she is so thrilled! It turns out that she has a story too, all the way back to her “great grandmoma” as she calls her.
This is the absolute joy of collecting. It’s not so much about the item as it is about the story, and sharing that story. Letting go of those 4 place settings was bitter sweet. But I’m smiling even as I write this because they didn’t go to someone random but went to someone who will care for them and enjoy them and perhaps think of me when she pulls them out. This lovely lady could have just received the place-settings and not given me a heads up that they arrived safely but she didn’t. She took the time to tell me a bit of her story which will now enhance the story of my own very cherished Francis the First.
Share your stories, you never know how your story will enhance someone else’s story and become part of their own.
Thanks for stopping!
Shelley
