Prompt # 52 - Inheritance

Prompt # 52 - Inheritance

Somehow I have become the keeper of several family treasures. From my paternal grandmother, her old geography school textbook, complete with some fold-out maps. Although Grandma would have used it in Ilminster, Somerset, in the first decade of the 20^th century, before she emigrated to Manitoba around 1912, the maps and political information contained within suggest that it was written before the 1830s. The map of North America is barely an outline of coastlines.

From my maternal grandmother, who was born in Portsmouth and went to school in Twickenham before she emigrated to Canada in 1913, a brass Buddha, wearing coral and carved wooden beads, sitting in a brass bowl on a carved wooden stand, a brass tray, a Tibetan prayer wheel, a silver hand mirror, silver button hooks, silver and ebony glove stretchers, a silver plate mustard pot with blue glass liner, a silver plate toast rack, a Belleek cake plate, a Wedgwood milk jug with hunting dog handle, her coral christening necklace, a hand-wrought gold necklace with amethyst and aquamarine stones, a gold cocktail ring set with seven diamonds, and a book – The Parents Book, Answers to Children's Questions. I think her mother, grandmother, and aunts used to send her things from England.

And from my maternal grandfather's family, who lived in Maine/New Brunswick before the border was drawn, and moved to Red River for ten years before moving farther west to British Columbia in 1891 - wedding china from 1870, a ceinture fleche, a Metis sash from Red River, circa 1870, a Hudson River Valley landscape painting, and oak-framed photographs of their ranch in BC taken before 1910.

From my cousin Carol who received them through her mother or aunt, a Dead Man's Penny with our grandmother's brother's name engraved, a medal awarded to the next of kin of every British or Commonwealth soldier who was killed during WW I. And pieces of ephemera – including a postcard sent from our great-great-grandmother (who died in 1920) to our grandmother in Canada before she was married.

I also have from my mother - an oil painting on wood from around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where she spent her wedding night. A blue lustre cream and sugar set, a green oval casserole, wool blankets, a Eugene Veder print - all wedding gifts. A statue of a horse. A jewel box with jewelery. An unusual necklace with pastel glass globes like mini light bulbs. Her silverware chest. A trunkful of photo albums. Table cloths. Her wedding dress. Lord, I even have an ancient wooden wagon wheel, moved from the Manitoba farm to BC when my parents retired to Vernon. The wheel was from an old grain-hauling wagon which probably came with the farm when my father bought it with veterans' assistance after WW II. It was also the wagon which brought me home to the farm when I was born, because the lane had not been built yet and cars could not get through from road to house during winter. Horses and wagon to the rescue. I love the symbolism of this old thing, a sun image you can find in ancient art. I found it once on the base of a High Cross in Ireland. I can't believe my parents saved it and brought it to BC as by then fifty years later, it was purely decorative. It leans on my deck.

Mostly I feel honoured to be the keeper of these “things” which by their connections to people, places, and times past, the stories they hold, I am keeping alive. Sometimes I feel the burden of “things” - the weight of responsibility. These things reduce my options. I need space to accommodate them. I have to figure out what to do with them. Not to mention the $40 x 20 years = $800 I've paid already to keep some things in a safety deposit box.

Of course, other than things, from each family and each ancestor I also inherited physical, intellectual, emotional traits, for better or for worse. I look like my father's family. I seem to have inherited my maternal grandmother's love of books, reading, and writing. When I used to visit her about every two years after she retired into town, I would volunteer to dust the books in her library. I hope I've also inherited her sense of humour. From all my ancestors, I proudly celebrate a questioning mind and a fair bit of contrariness.