My family’s history and story is of great concern to, so much so that I intend to reconstruct the family tree as far as I can get in order to know who came before me.
In this same sense, I put a lot a value into objects that have reached through the generations. I have china, some furniture, personal items, photos and photo albums, etc.
Everything tells a piece of a story I wasn’t able to fully live through and instead just brushed me growing up.
It gives me a sense of belonging.
Several knives, blades, and daggers in my dad’s knife collection belonged to his grandfather, and were passed down to his father. He says he plans on dividing the collection among his kids when the time comes.
Knives mean a lot in our family. We each got our first pocket knife on our 8th birthday, the same way our dad got his first one. Knife safety (especially passing a knife) is part ritual, part common sense. We give them as gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and Easter. It’s a way of making sure the people we love the most will always have the oldest and most useful tool mankind ever invented in their pocket.
I know it’s considered bad luck in some cultures, but to us, it’s a heartfelt act of love. I’ll be honored to have my father’s knife one day.
We have an accordion played by my great grandfather.
Does anyone still knows how to play it?
Unfortunately no! I will learn if it passes into my hands - I already play other instruments.
All the luck on that!
Only things I’ve had passed down to me like that have been guns.
I don’t have the room for half of the furniture my mother tried to give me. She wanted me to take an old dining table that’s the size of my current living room.
One of those old fashioned solid wood dining table for twelve?
It’s a shame. I wanted to make a solid wood table at some point in my life but four to six seatings will be more than enough.
Happy Cakeday.
It seated 8 comfortably, maybe up to 12 if you crowded a bit. It was SOLID and I regret that it probably ended up in a landfill.
So that is what that little icon means. Thanks.
I’ve seen tables like that very carefully split in two smaller ones. It took serious crafmanship but the end result retained the same “soul”, pardon the expression.
I would have loved to do that but we were so poor food was a problem to manage. Some strong, sturdy furniture made out of solid wood, not particle board wrapped in plastic.
Even synthetic wood can make good furniture nowadays, if one is willing to put in some work.
I’m in the process of building a few bookshelves and we opted for OSB. Well sanded and varnished, it turns into an unusually solid material. And it takes a beating. I involved my kids in process and it has been a near little project.
I just make the calculations for the parts I need and have them cut at a carpenter, that also sells me board. I bring everything home and do the finishing, which is the most expensive part.
Next, I will go into solid wood. And into a more daunting project.
When I talk about particle board it’s much more of the sawdust glued together stuff that’s super cheap but doesn’t last too long.
I wish you great luck in your endeavors with wood working. It sounds like a lot of learning but is a very functional skill to have.
I understood it has such. That is the kind of crap furniture that keeps people hostage and degrades their quality of life.
Thank you for your kind words and I wish you the best as well.
Not really. My wife has some bulky furniture that we plan on tossing out once her mother dies. It’s worthless and of no practical use, which is probably why she passed it by on already.
My grandparents had some cool stuff, but their children got in an argument over some of it, so I don’t know who got what and I don’t want anything to do with that. Hopefully they’re happy with ruining their relationships over items that belong in a museum.
I have a brosh and my cousin has the earrings my great great great whatever wore when she was painted by Monet. Whenever he went to the Netherlands he always stayed at my family. She wears mourning clothes and jewelry.
Here’s the painting, which hangs at the Kruller Muller museum in Apeldoorn The Netherlands.
Now that is a story!
I have an even better story. The biggest Dutch sea pirate was an ancestor of me. Back then it was an honorable profession. The entire area of the Zaanstreek was his. Whenever you go to the open air museum Zaanse Schans, all the windmills and store fronts were owned by him. When Willem van Orange (William of Orange) wanted to unite the 7 provinces, creating the first nation of The Netherlands, my ancestor was the main funder of the project, his signature is on the decleration of the seven provinces.
Monet stayed at that family. Nothing of their wealth has reached me sadly, only the story and the brosh. Even the painting was illegally donated by someone’s partner to the museum due to the high insurance costs. But at least everyone can see it now and it is well maintained. And I have a good story to tell. I wouldn’t have minded it if I had inherited a house or something though.
The sea pirate was Engel van de Stad by the way. Not much is known about him online, as he never worked for the state so he never was named a naval hero or something like Michiel de Ruyter for example. Yet the fortune he gained by raiding British, French and Spanish fleets helped create the country I call home. We have only found documentation in a museum and in archives. I bet it would make amazing YouTube videos as soon as his story comes out.
Some tale!
I have 2 rifles with bayonets and a wakizashi that my grandfather acquired from WWII, and a level that my carpenter great-grandfather used.
You mean like, from my victims?
Those, I think, are called mementos.
I don’t have any official heirlooms, but I like to bake, and have inherited a few quality vintage mixing bowls that my grandparents - and later my parents - used, so I consider them to be heirlooms at this point.
Yup, I’ve got quite a few things by now, and I’m in line for some more.
I don’t know about a sense of belonging, but a historical thing you’re tangentially connected to is cooler than just a random historical thing.
No. We used to have many. My grandparents kept them. After they died, my parents, aunts, and uncle threw everything that wasn’t worth money into a dumpster. They kept the jewelry, coins, watches, and other valuables; everything worth less than $50 got trashed. Photo albums, collars from old pets, pictures they drew as children, sentimental trinkets, my grandpa’s pocket knives, my great grandpa’s letters home during the war for Czech independence, all of it, gone. A lot of it had been stuff I did in school or pictures of me.
“What do you want that for? It ain’t worth nothing,” they would tell me when I asked to keep anything.
People suck.
As my Silent Generation relatives have been dying off, each of them has had boxes of family history - photos, sometimes dating back to early 1900s, diaries/journals, kids’ school art, yearbooks… None of it organized, few of the photos with any indication of who’s in them, where or when they were taken, even who did the art. Shoebox after shoebox of Christmas pictures. Sometimes, one of the survivors will recognize photos, but no one has ever made the effort to record the oral histories, so they will soon be just photos of strangers in mystery locations.
Organize that stuff. Curate it. Make it possible for kids to care.
That was painful to read.
A little while ago a relative told us about how they moved for their parents work. All the toys were thrown out, all the photos; like you everything that wasn’t worth something was disposed of. They even drowned the family cat.
It’s a bit amazing they’re not hardcore hoarders, they just low key keep things.
They drowned the cat? That’s disturbing.
That is for sure!
No I don’t.
I have a diary of my grandma that she wrote during her evacuation from cologne in 1943, and I have an old mandolin my grandfather bought from a homeless man on a street. That meant my grandmother wouldn’t be able to buy food for their 13 children so she was pissed af, but that makes great story for this instrument.
That is quite a story.
I have a few, and created one of my own. I have a steamer trunk that’s been in the family for 5 or more generations, the family Bible from who knows how far back, and proposed to my wife with the ring my papa used to propose to my mom. I also had a sword forged for my wedding, engraved with our family name. While I don’t intend to have children I plan on passing these things down to my nephews when the time comes
Than sounds like a very well thought plan.
I have a painting of the Australian desert that belonged to my mother. It’s banished to the second bedroom because it’s got a thick coating of nicotine, but I plan to have it cleaned some day.
Nicotine can be hard to clean. I wish you all the luck with that.
