Cradling a treasure he had found in the bedroom where he was staying, my son said, “Mom! Can you imagine how much this would cost in an antique shop? Staying here is like living in a time capsule!” His voice, full of awe, let me know that he was finding his Great Grandmother’s home as exciting and as much fun as I always had.
In another time, while my Grandmother was alive, I worshipped my beloved aunt because she shared with me just such little treasures and trinkets. “Mother, I just love my Aunt Dot; she gives me all her old stuff she doesn’t want any more!”
Grandmother and Mother have gone on, Aunt Dot and I are both much older and the children are another generation, but little has changed about the house where my Mother lived, married and visited almost every year for as long as I can remember.
It is hard to imagine living nearly 60 years in the same place! That sense of timelessness contributes much to the peaceful and serene feeling of the home in Oklahoma where four girls grew under the living and militant eye of my Grandmother Hurt. She, who had been born in Indian Territory, instilled in her girls the values and nurturing abilities passed on to her from her Mother, Granny Bird.
From the tales told of this long ago pioneer woman, I doubt even famed Oklahoma weather or Indians ever daunted her! Most of the pictures, lovingly pasted into books, of my Grandmother and her siblings were taken by this amazing woman who photographed her husband walking their crying baby to try out her newfangled black powder flash! Because of her, these relatives from long ago live on in the steady gaze of the earnest merchant, the dapper young man sporting a cane who I later knew as the staid but twinkle-eyed Grandfather I adored, and the sad, sweetsmiling infant portatif of a daughter who didn’t survive to adulthood. Sixty years seem but a snap of the fingers in such a place.
We played cards in front of the fireplace in the room where my Mother was married 50 plus years ago and heard tales from the aunts about the tricks they played on her as she sat courting my father! My son slept in the bed where his Great Grandfather was born, one hundred and eight years ago and read books left on the shelves as if just yesterday given to his Grandmother, “with love, to Betty, from Mother, 1920”. We heard with what anticipation they awaited the first grandchild’s arrival and how carefully they examined her to be sure that she (ME!) was “all there”! On every table, in every drawer, atop each mantel, or hanging on walls, everywhere are found pictures, mementos, trinkets, exquisite glassware, photographs, books, furniture, linens and clothing. These objects are not artificially arranged antiques to simulate another era, but treasures used and enjoyed every day by those who call this home. In the truest sense, this is history, living and real, a continuing story of family and place.
Why is this “going back”, this “returning to roots” so important? Because what we saw happen with our son has happened before, in another generation, and can only happen again through him! We heard the confidence in our son’s voice as he began to identify his Grandmotheras-a-child in the books of family photographs, the wonder he expressed over the lifestyles and occupations of his “ancestors”, and the enthusiasm he showed, not “polite-but-please-be-oversoon” but genuine interest in these long-ago folks who became real through the eyes of the aunts. Through this young man’s interest the next generation of young adults will come to know how important they were to those who came before them. As this boy comes a “twinkle-eyed” and beloved Granddaddy to a whole new group of kids, he will instill in them a sense of history, a sense of place, a feeling of belonging. And it is just this, that all important sense of belonging, of feeling important, of being cared for and about that is the most important reason for each of us having our own “time capsule”.
