The Magic of Objects

I’m sitting at home this Saturday morning.  I think that is a first for 2013.  Every weekend since Christmas has had some flurry of activity that hasn’t afforded this luxury of idleness.  Not that I don’t have a long list of things to do… but some of that to do is taking some quiet moments to reflect on the tornado that shook up life in the last six weeks.

One could say most of that tornado is just a redistribution of objects.  And objects are merely things.  But not always.

Many of these busy Saturdays have included a visit to my grandmother’s house… now almost more justifiably to be called my aunt’s house.  Rooms that haven’t changed shape for the entirety of my 37 years are now disassembled, empty, and about to regenerate into a new structure.  But to get to that point, there were several Saturdays of pulling out clothes from a moth ball stuffed cupboard, shaking mouse poo out of dishes unused for half a decade, a display of everyday objects that had more value than anything auctioned at Christie’s, wrapping up dishes synonymous with Christmas in old newspapers, filling a U-Haul, looking at all those objects condensed into one room… and wondering how a near century of living could change scene so swiftly.

It was sad.  It is sad to know that house is no longer the constant of my childhood memory.  But at the very same time, it is joyful to see it have a new life, a continued life, and the opportunity for new memories.  It has been heartwarming to share our different memories of these mere things, the moments that are frozen in our unique relationships with that house and its original owners.  It has been amazing to discover old photographs and to marvel amazed at things forgotten.  

I don’t know if I can call it magic.  If it is even special in the whole spectrum of the world.  But for so many, it was magic.  It was always our home, even if we didn’t sleep or eat there every day of the year.  The attic, the cellar, the golf course with its rolling hills, the abandoned outdoor stove on which we cooked hundreds of muddy, leafy meals, the candy jar, the blackboard in the kitchen, the ice chip grinder, the square pattered rug… so many of these things, these mere objects are linked to Christmases, childhood fantasy, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, good food, children laughing, a finger pointing, an eyebrow raise, a whistle, sledding, so many people who love each other we have to eat in three different rooms…

  

And now all those objects, those pieces are spread out over the country.  But… I realized at some point… it isn’t because it’s broken.  It’s because that house connects us.  It gives us each some of that magic in the places we sleep, eat, and meet the tediousness of daily life. 

And so I take this relatively quiet Saturday to go through one of my last piles of new treasure.  I have already settled the dining room furniture and put away the glassware.  I laundered the dish towels and found sunny windows for the plants.  But a bag full of cookbooks remained in the place I hastily left them when I needed to empty my car.

I picked these up last Saturday from the pile of unclaimed goodies.  This is my year of historic cooking, so I figured there were some good options from these 1960’s copyrighted books.  I didn’t expect to open them and find that magic.

This week has been… challenging.  And all this change, I’m not going to deny, has me contemplating changes and increases my frustration with that which does not shift with the times.  I ended my Friday feeling a surge of disappointment and futility.

Then, amused by the concept of a Yankee cookbook, I opened the cover.  Before even seeing a typeface, there was my grandmother’s handwriting filling the page with my mother’s chocolate cake recipe.  I smiled, thinking of childhood’s magic as I read her timestamps on recipes and the torn pages from magazines left in between pages.  And there, opposite a crinkled brownie recipe was the instructions for making a squirrel pie.  One thing I definitely shared with my grandmother was a disdain for squirrels.  I daresay we both disliked them enough to be disgusted by the notion of eating one… but it was the source of a much needed laugh.

So I took that laugh and went to the next book, a collection of chicken recipes.  Another clipping offered chicken recipes for every year from 1948 until 1990something… the last page was missing.  A boon for the supper club theme.  And then, finally, in between the pages of a vegetable cookbook, I found this.

I’m not going to name what this is, dear reader.  We all have our own interpretations of coincidences, what we need them to mean to us when we are sad.  But I will say this.  That card was probably inserted in the book some time around 1987, when my grandmother noted she tried the baked tomato recipe.  It may have seen daylight since then… but probably not much in recent years.  If that book hadn’t moved from the drawer of the pantry closet, if it hadn’t been in the pile of books nobody else wanted, if I hadn’t put off looking through these recipes until a week later… I would not have seen this card today, this morning… when I needed to see those words most.

It may be all coincidence.  It may be a catalyst.  Or it could just simply be the thing my grandmother’s house always was and always will be in its pieces… comfort and love.