Heirlooms

Heirloom, noun: something of special value handed down from one generation to another

The last time I was at my mother’s home in Tennessee, I went on a search. I was hoping to find some photo heirlooms. I’ve recently become supremely aware of how rare handheld heirlooms are, with everything being so digital and disposable.

I’m not a very sentimental person, but the longer I live the more I know that memories fade. And there are some things that I can’t forget.

I can’t forget my Uncle Ted. I found him wearing a thick velvet costume and posing in a promotional photo for a Shakespeare play at his local theater. He played Othello.

I can’t forget my great-grandmother whose name I carry and my mom carries and my daughter carries, and whose photo now has a place on my home altar. I never met her but I see her every day now.

I can’t forget the way my brothers and I looked when we were toddlers, piled on top of each other wearing diapers and crowded into my mother’s slender arms.

After sorting through so many boxes, I had a small pile to claim. Not all of the chosen heirlooms made it back to Kansas City; they all had to go through the “Mom filter”, and some of the generational memories that I was searching for were too big, too precious, or too tender to pass through.

I came away with about 31 photos, a capsule of heirlooms that I folded into my journal and placed in between the sweaters in my suitcase.

On the way back to my home, I started to imagine sorting through the piles of heirlooms that are emotional, behavioral, habitual, familial, and cultural in the same way that I sort through the physical piles.

What should I keep? What should be blessed, then released? Which ancient jewels are hiding in my pockets, weighing me down?

The quiet and wise skepticism that I inherited from my mother - I’ll keep that. It has served me well, even as it led me to bless and release my ties to the church where she lovingly raised me.

I’ve been able to unburden myself of some of the oppressive weight of white supremacy capitalist lies, which I inherited as a child of America and which are almost impossible to filter completely.

I have community, love, self-expression, liberated relationships, new stories, and wisdom inherited from those I encounter on my journey.

These days, I’m thinking about what I can give to my child. What heirlooms will she keep from me? No doubt, some of the rough stuff will slip through the filter, and she’ll have some heirlooms that she’ll need to break one day.

But hopefully, as she grows and is sorting through the piles, she will come to know that her mother (and my mother, and hers, and hers) are all just people - doing the best we can with what we have in the time and space that we have been given.

I want her to remember what it looks like to give what you have, take what you need, and leave the rest.