Antique lives

Antiques for Sale!

The sign above the door waving in the wind, called to us; "Come on in, wherever you are from". It is weathered and bleached of its color by the unrelenting time warp that cohabitates with most small rural towns in it's never ending square dance of seasons. The sign is, in itself, the truest harbinger of the world to be explored inside.

I pause at the door, always a little afraid of the odd mixture of emotions I sustain when I am inside places like this. You see, do not go inside to shop for "TREASURES TO BE SCORED", or "BOOTY TO BE SCAVANGED", or "DEALS TO BE MADE", nor "LOW, LOW, WE ARE CRAZY NUTS!" prices.

No, I am going to go inside to spend some time reverently walking among the last remains of the long forgotten. To try to slip inside, in tiny hyper-cognizant bursts, the events reflected by these heirlooms of life.

To be sure, there are the "what's left after spring cleaning" and the "discounted goods that didn't sell all that well to begin withs"....... But what makes up the bulk of the inventory of these stores, is the unwanted detritus of estate sales from people who's lives on this planet have fought age and time, and lost.

There are so many lives represented here, so many families, and generations. And every single piece, whispers a memory.

After all, these things were once BELONGED to. They have an energy and story that is part of them forever. Everywhere I look there are thousands of items, and in each item there are lives lived.

Take as an example a small silver teaspoon frame I found. It was sitting with dozens of others that seem to be exactly like it. And they are similar, except they are also very not the same in one simple way. These are the spoons of three very specific people on this planet.

Somewhere, there are two brothers and a sister named Jonathan, Elsibeth and Theodore. They were born, loved and cherished. The evidence lies here in my hands, in the form of 3 sterling silver spoons, engraved with their names, honoring their delivery onto this planet.

I wonder, where are you now?.......

There is joy and pride here. There is love and pain too. All represented by these small tokens of new life. The life stories are there for anyone to read, sunken into the tarnished silver ...a loose tooth, cub scouts, ballet lessons, scarlet fever, first kisses, graduations. Someone cherished the memories these tokens represent so much, that they are still in perfect condition. The box is perfect. In fact, all these decades later even the ribbons wrapped around the handles are perfect.
I wonder, John, Ellie and Theo, what events in your lives led you to where you don't have these spoons?

I turn left and look up to the top shelf on this row behind me. I see a full set of cobalt blue martini glasses and a pitcher. I ring two glasses together and transport those glasses and myself back to a different decade and place. I imagine them being joyously purchased to help celebrate a family triumph like the buying of a first home or a big promotion. Or, maybe these glasses were just the thing to put the taste of gin on your tounge, because it was a beautiful summer day and you were with the most gorgeous woman anywhere ever, and all of life was so, so joyful....

I wonder who's hand toasted that promotion? Is she still gorgeous...in someones eyes? Doesn't someone from that life need these glasses anymore?

Everywhere I look memories and emotions rise up.....
A picture magazine in black and white, mourning the death of an assassinated president jerks me quickly back into my own past. I can clearly remember my mother, a woman not prone to crying, sobbing for days.......My eyes rest on a pipe. I pick it up and it has a smell that reminds me of someone who's face I can't quite make out, yet I am positive I can remember the sound of him laughing.....A kitchen utensil sits one shelf below the pipe. It is an odd looking contraption. The only reason I have the vaugest idea of what it does, comes from my earliest recollections of sitting in a kitchen long ago and waiting for the best apple crisp I ever ate to cool.....

These were all once the proud personal possessions of grandmas, or poppops, or nanas, or nice old ladies from down the block. These are people who at one point in their lives, were doctors and business tycoons, politicians, movers and shakers and war hero's. These were our moms and dads. Maybe they had a little more to do with their parents and grand parents then we do with ours...maybe not.

Because now..... these people are forgotten....and we, the children and grandchildren, are the mover and shakers. And the cycle of life continues it inevitable grind...... to what exactly? A funky smelling antique shop in rural Iowa?

Walking the rows, I become conscious of the smells of time. Tired is the word that comes to mind....tired and old. Grandparent attic and basement old. This is not a bad smell. However it does seems to tingle old memories somewhere in my head. Walking down the last isle which was populated by bedding and tablecloths and the faint scent of mothballs and lavender. It reminds me of sitting on a cedar closet floor as a young child and playing, while clothes hung on bars above me.

Lost in all the smells and nearing the dead-end of a row, my eye was pulled to an old book that looked to me like it had been lying there for a long time. As I came closer, I felt it calling me, as though it had been waiting for me, knowing I would be coming. Heavy and dark, it smelled of that wonderful, musty old book smell that I love so much. I opened it to discover it was a well worn family Bible.

The front pages are taken up with a family tree. It is filled with wedding joy and birth announcements and baptisms. I turned to the back of the book, to the last entries and I read. And I suddenly knew that this was what I was brought here for. This book needed me to find it.
I sat down with the bible cradled in my lap and read it again, slowly.

All three children of this family, are entered here. They all appeared to have died within 6 months of each other in 1945. They were 2,3 and 5. Though all of the earlier entries were quite thorough, these were noticeably different. The reasons given were only "after short illnesses". The final entry says simply, "My wife and the mother of my 3 children died quietly in 1946 at the age of 29". In handwriting made almost illegible by emotion, it says..."reason: broken heart".

I do the math..she would have been in her late 80's if she had lived. Presumably her husband, the only surviving member of the family would be roughly that age as well. The only reason I can imagine it would be here, would be on account of his death, and there being no one left in the world to claim what marked this family's passing....this book, the lonely record left behind.

I think of him being alone, and without his wife and children all those years and I find my eyes are burning with tears. I close the Bible and put it gently back on the dusty shelf I took it from.

What happened to this man? I don't know. It does not say.

There are absolutely no more entries in the Bible.

I think I am through looking at antiques for a while.

Posted by Jack at February 25, 2003 04:14 AM