Write About Family Treasures

 

I have always loved silhouette pictures. I feel certain it is because, wherever my parents lived, a pair of silhouette pictures were hung on a wall. They were small, square, and in a black frame. One was of my mother facing left and the other of my dad facing right. They were always hung so that they seemed to be gazing at one another. Taken in their early married days in 1938, the silhouettes became a family treasure. 

I have written a personal essay about the much-loved pictures. Little did I know that one of my younger brothers treasured them as much as I did, and he received them when our mother left her home. I would have enjoyed having them, but I knew they were in a good place.

When you write your family stories, treasures like my parents' silhouettes, deserve to be highlighted in a story of their own. Even after I was on my own, then married and a mother, I loved seeing those pictures when visiting my parents. 

The dish in the photo was a wedding gift to my maternal grandmother from the owner of a general store in a small coal mining town in southeastern Iowa. The wedding had been small and private, probably between 1905 and 1910. When my grandmother stopped in the store a short time later, the owner said, "I heard you got married, Elizabeth, I think that calls for a gift." And he handed her a pretty, painted dish. Small and dainty but something she would treasure forever. The dish passed to my mother, and then on to me. I see it whenever  I walk by my china cabinet.

When I received the dish along with the story that my mother told me, I decided to write about it. Not a family story, but a fiction story for children. In "Just Plain Sarah Jane," the dish is a part of the story of a young girl who sees it in the store window and wants to buy it for her mother. By the time she saved her pennies to purchase the dish, it had been sold. Sarah Jane is determined to have the dish and therein lies the rest of the story. 

All of the above is leading to my encouraging you to include special family treasures when writing your family stories. Instead of an "I don't know" when someone asks where that old cedar chest came from, you should be able to give its history. Or that of a special quilt that has been handed down through generations. Maybe it's a special pipe Great-Granddad smoked, or a shawl brought over from the old country, or a set of china, or figurines. There are any number of family treasures that should be identified in writing. It needn't be pages and pages, sometimes a paragraph or two will suffice. 

I have a pretty little hand-painted chocolate set that my father-in-law had made for his wife. My children did not know him as he died when one was quite young and the other an infant. I need to write about that set to help them know what a kind and thoughtful man he was. 

As you walk around your house, note the family pieces you have. If you don't know the story behind any of them, ask other, older family members. Just like family stories, these treasures should be written about and remembered.