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Times have changed. Our children
entertain by ordering or picking up food.
They are both excellent cooks, but will
they pull out the good china that needs to
be washed by hand, or polish the silver,
or iron a damask tablecloth and linen nap-
kins? They currently don’t have space to
store fine china or silver. We got married in
1970, and in those days, we received a lot
of silver — much of it I don’t use. How-
ever, it fills two large inlaid hand-carved
wooden trunks made in Pakistan. They
both have big brass padlocks, and I keep
the skeleton keys secured.
In Panama, I collected hand-stitched
molas made by the Guna Indians. In Paki-
stan, I acquired hand-knotted Persian and
tribal carpets over many cups of sweet
tea. My husband enjoyed collecting pre-
war brass (that needs to be polished). My
favorite pieces are the brass camel brace-
lets that adorn our coffee table, always
a conversation piece. They are remind-
ers of riding in open carriages through the
bazaars and following the camels with a
rhythmic gait as they balanced a load of
hay triple their size. Then there is the art
we have collected from the Virgin Islands
to China.
We all collected books and have leath-
erbound National Geographic issues dat-
ing back to the 1970s. The world is read-
ing everything online, and digital media
is the way to go. My basement has boxes
of papers related to our family history,
documents certifying our genealogy, let-
ters from my grandparents, generations of
yearbooks, school records and boxes of
photographs.
The photos and photo albums we have
lovingly cherished are fading. They are
cumbersome and falling apart. The videos
of our children are on outdated technology.
I have travel guides from the places where
we lived and others we visited. Some are
dusty and in poor condition, but they all
tell stories about our family history. How
do you organize that, and to what purpose?
As I am aging surrounded by all these
objects and beautiful memories, I ask
myself what to do with everything? I need
a conversation with my children as they
have not noted any specific attachment.
The things my parents inherited were a
burden. They did their best to preserve
it and ensured we all had a family sofa,
a clock, some of the china or crystal that
filled the pantry.
I don’t want our family history lost in a
massive estate sale where things are turned
into monetary value, but the history is lost.
Does history matter? I haven’t resolved
this dilemma, nor do I know where to start.
This essay was produced through a class
taught by Tom Hallman Jr., a Pulitzer Prize
winning reporter at The Oregonian.
Mandy Goldberg
A row of hardcover and paperback books.
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