I don’t know if y’all remember my “attic saga” from a few months ago, but I wanted to tell you about a particular treasure I found. The attic floor was sagging from all the “stuff” that was stored up there—yes, it was all stuff I had kept, but in my defense a lot of it had come from other places: My mom’s and dad’s when they could no long live at home; my oldest sister when she had her stroke and had to go into a nursing home; and of course, the things I’d kept for my kids; and my OWN keepsakes! WHEW! That was a lot!
Everything has been cleaned out and gotten rid of or “re-kept”, but I’m down to a total of about 18 containers now from probably close to 75 or 80. There were still 5 or 6 that I had not gone through that I’d brought downstairs, knowing they were going to take some time, since they were a hodgepodge of things that included correspondence and pictures, as well as other things.
My dad and mom on their 47th wedding anniversary
But the very first time I opened one of them up and started to go through it, I found something wrapped in cotton, and then in tissue paper, and a bag, and I knew that was something my mom had done. Mom was one to always write notes on things to let us know what they were. This was something my sisters and I would roll our eyes at, because she was so detailed in the descriptions she wrote.
But this time, I was so glad.
This treasure was something I’d never seen or known about. It was a sugar bowl. The note explained it all, and I still get teary when I think of it.
You see, my sisters were 10 and 12 when I was born, so a good part of my parents’ lives together had already happened by the time I came along. Certainly, the very hard times of first starting out together, of having their first home, and their first child (and second!) and those lean years that were now in the past.
But the sugar bowl told the story in a way conversational description could not.
When I unwrapped it, it was a China pattern I had never seen, so the sugar bowl must have remained after the other pieces had been broken. Maybe that’s why she saved it. I took the lid off, half-hoping there would be a note inside to tell why it had been wrapped so carefully and kept all those years.
I was not disappointed. This note is so typical of the things my mom wrote and taped to keepsakes. She didn’t want her life or the past to be forgotten. What a blessing to have found this!
This just made my heart glad in so many ways, and this sugar bowl, with the note inside, is sitting on the top shelf of my desk so I can just glance up at it whenever I want. That remembrance she included in the note of how happy she and my dad were with their little family, before I was ever born, is something I will treasure forever.
Mom and Dad, newlyweds, 1944
Of everything I’ve come across in those crates from the attic, this is the most treasured item I’ve found so far. There is a chip in the lid, and a crack that has been glued back together, and Mom’s ever-present masking tape holding the lid shut so it won’t fall off and break, but it will take a lot to beat this treasure!
In my book, LOVE UNDER FIRE, my heroine, Krissy, finds the pink pistol amidst her possessions. She doesn’t know who it belongs to or how it came to be in her bag, but instantly, she admires the feel of the wooden case, and she knows it was carved with such love. That’s how I feel about this sugar bowl. That note my mom included is filled with love and gratitude for those sweet memories of earlier days.
Have you ever found or been given something that had been forgotten or put away that you felt this way about? Please tell us about it!
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