Oh my gosh I have such a good story to tell for National Old Stuff day!

I am a very sentimental person so I have a lot of old stuff in my life. I especially like old stuff that has been passed down in my family. Three of my four grandparents are immigrants who fled due to the series of pogroms that were sweeping through Eastern Europe before the beginning of the Second World War. On my mother’s side, I don’t think anything was brought over from Hungary or from Poland that had any sentimental value. They simply grabbed what they needed to survive and they fled.

On my father’s side, my grandmother was born in Warsaw and came to America with her three siblings when she was about six years old. When I helped her move from Florida to Los Angeles when I was in college, we went through a lot of her things and decided which things were going to leave and which she was going to bring on the plane. We had decided not to ship any of her things so everything she wanted we had to carry.

I discovered that she had a few platters that were brought over from Poland as well as her mother’s wooden rolling dowel.  Because I am sentimental I knew that I wanted to bring these things with us on the journey to move her to Los Angeles.  There were a few sets of cocktail glasses that she also wanted me to have and they are cherished additions to my kitchenware.

There was one set of items, however, that my grandmother wanted me to schlep on the airplane, but which I resisted: a small but very, VERY heavy collection of cast iron dollhouse furniture. This was not brought over from Poland and it was not of any apparent monetary value. It was something she had obviously bought in America, but which she had great sentimental attachment to.

I packed up the platters and the rolling pin and the set of cocktail glasses with the gold around the rim and the cast-iron dollhouse furniture and a few suitcases of her clothing and I moved her to Los Angeles.

Flash forward a decade. The cast-iron dollhouse furniture stayed in a special box in my closet; from time to time, I took the pieces out and looked at them. My grandmother passed away and we mourned her passing. I got divorced, my ex-husband moved, I moved.

Last summer, I did a complete purging and reorganization of my house. I got rid of almost 2 dozen garbage bags full of things that I had not been using. I made donations and my house and my life started opening up.  As I went through my house, I knew that my grandmother’s cast iron dollhouse furniture collection is missing. I wracked my brain and pretty much turned the house upside down looking for it, but I couldn’t find the box. I resigned myself to  accepting that at some other time in the past five or so years, I must have discarded the cast iron dollhouse furniture.

I wanted to cry at the thought of this. This was so very important to her that I carried it on a plane across the country so that she would not have to leave it behind. And I kicked and scolded myself for what I assumed was my own fleeting moment of lack of sentimentality.

And then a few weeks ago, I got a text from my ex-husband with the following words:  “Are these yours?”
Attached to the text was a photo of my grandmother’s cast iron dollhouse furniture collection.  I started to cry and texted him back, “Oh my gosh yes that  was my grandmother’s cast-iron dollhouse furniture collection! I thought I had thrown it out! Why on earth do you have it!?”

It turns out in the shuffle of our divorce and both of us moving, the box made it into his garage. He was recently going through his things  and he found it.

And so, on National Old Stuff day,  I want to honor the memories held within the old stuff that we hold onto. It’s important to know when to let go, but it’s also important to know when to hold on.