The Things We Surround Ourselves With

It is nearing my twenty-first anniversary and even if I was someone who was bad at remembering dates, I could not help but remember this one because my peonies tend to bloom around now. You see, 21 years ago, when my husband and I were scrapping together a “barn-raising” marriage in Chatham County—I call it that because everyone who attended was put to work, but no one more so than my parents—my mother, in addition to making all the dresses and bringing appetizers to supplement the catering, brought all the flowers from her garden. My bridesmaids carried bouquets of peonies, while I carried roses. When Gregg and I moved back to North Carolina at the end of 2003, Mom brought me those very peony bushes to plant in the garden of what would become our first permanent home.

I am looking around my home at other items which bring up good memories. I am sitting here writing this at the table my parents and younger brother and I ate every meal at when visiting my grandparent’s home in Smithfield while growing up.

My husband’s father turned bowls and we have around our home a collection of these. We also have the lathe “Pop” made them with in the garage, as well as a barber chair from the shop where he cut hair for forty years in downtown Wilmington. We have a collection of poetry Gregg’s mother published before she died.

My mother recently brought me small wooden carvings her Uncle Paavo carried in a ruck sack, when he burned his house in Viipori down before fleeing the Russian soldiers who would soon overtake that part of eastern Finland. I have the hand-knotted rug his wife Senja made of the Viipori town square. I didn’t know it was this until I visited the now-Russian town of Vyborg many, many years later.

I’ve kept the note, in Finnish script, my grandmother Mummi wrote when she gave me a cross for my Confirmation.

I've safely stored the letters my father wrote each of my kids for their Confirmations.

We live in a Walmart-Costco-Sam’s Club era, where so much of what we surround ourselves with visually can be bought for under $10 and so much of what we drop off in the donation box of the Thrift Shop is priceless. I know we can imbue some Walmart items with meaning over time, but what if we instead put on the mantle something with a story behind it?

When Gregg and I lived in Japan many years ago with our young children, one of the first things I noticed in every Japanese home I walked into was a small shrine. It originated as a way to recognize and remember the virtues of Buddha before the busy day began, but many of the homes we visited also included old photos of ancestors in the shrine. It was a custom each morning to make a small offering—a thimble-sized cup of green tea, some rice, a tangerine—not only to Buddha’s memory, but also to all the ancestors who came before you and carried you, who helped make you who you are today.

I don’t know what my children will choose to take from our home and display in their own homes one day. But my most treasured items are in display cases featuring things we’ve found on the many hikes and walks our family has made together over the last 18 years. From shells to birds' nests, small snakes and fossils and bugs, these along with my children's early art work and writing never fail to bring me some happiness.

What items do that for you in your home?