(c) 2009 Katherine Quimby Johnson

Sorting Stuff

 
We’ve been called the sandwich generation, but what they don’t tell us is that some of our days are going to be filled with, well, stuff. Specifically our parents’ stuff, or, if you want to take a slightly wider view, family stuff. This is not meant figuratively; I’m not talking about wills and paperwork and decisions about nursing homes, although those need to be made, too. I mean physical, tangible stuff. All the things that accumulated during the however many years they lived in their homes.
 

For the past seven months, my husband’s surviving siblings and their spouses, my husband (Greg), and I, with occasional help from our college-age daughter, have spent our weekends in Connecticut, clearing out the house my husband’s parents’ purchased in 1948. We have discovered the Motherlode of Stuff.

  One side of Attic II, Room 1, in April  (photo: KQJ).


 Attic II, Room 2, in April (photo KQJ)

The whole house was not as bad as the attics, but we did find over 300 men's ties in the master bedroom, covering fashion history from the straight and narrow '50s to the swinging '70s and on through today.

 The ties HH chose to bring home clearly cover the spectrum. (photo KQJ)

We found

Gloves for all seasons, from an elbow-length lavender pair fit to wear to a ball to the navy single-button ones that every grandmother wore for fall in the 1950s and early ’60s. Alas, our hands are all too large.
 

Hats, also for all seasons, (to go with the gloves, of course).

  "I'm my own grandma" (photo L. Johnson)

 

   
Vogue, circa 1956? (photo L. Johnson)

Annie Hall, anyone? (photo KQJ)

We found
 

Toys, from a worn-out stuffed sheep to a still-wrapped snap-together wooden train engine and car that didn’t make it to my husband in Christmas 1956. (More on that Christmas in a bit.)

Table linens, tea towels, and doilies, some hand made by Nana, some by various great aunts, some brought back from trips to Sweden or Scotland. 
 

China, 18 sets of it (to date), from florid Nippon-ware, no doubt purchased while Uncle Harry was on leave from Korea (Harry was career military and married to Aunt Ena), to a set purchased for some unknown reason in 1978. Each set serves anywhere from six to 14 people.
 

 Some of the Nipponware. In the background you can see a small tea pot that is missing its lid. Until the last box is opened, the tea pot won't be delegated to the yard sale. A decanter found in the attic was eventually reunited with its stopper, which was in a box in the basement. (photo KQJ)

18 sets of china?!!
 

I promise you, I'm not making that number up. In the beginning, my best guess for the number of sets of china in the house would have been six, including one in the basement that Nana left to my sister-in-law. However, that number isn’t as excessive as it seems. Once upon a time, in that world where women wore gloves and hats whenever they went out, three sets of china were standard in what my grandmother would have called “a respectable house.” One set was for breakfast, one for everyday, and one, the “good china,” was only used on Sundays and holidays.
 

But still—18 sets of china?

I can explain. While this house was, indeed, crammed so full that family fans of “Dr. Who” speculated it was a Tardis machine, the contents are not simply one couple’s lifetime accumulation. As Greg and his brother and sister began to recognize specific items, it became possible to say, “What’s in the attic over the garage came from Nana’s,” or “What’s in the back corner of the second room of the other attic is from the first time Aunt Ena stayed with us.” (Ena was one of the first group of wives to go to Germany after World War II, but she could not follow Harry to Korea.) Between grandparents, maiden great-aunts and aunts, the equivalent of at least five households worth of stuff ended up in my in-law’s house.

Simple mathematics (3 x 6=18) thus shows that the total number of sets of china is that necessary for respectability. Of course, the numbers don’t include partial sets of china, or tantalizing remnants of sets—a cup, saucer, and platter, for instance.

We will not keep it all. No more than we wear gloves or hats every day, do we have cupboard space in our homes for more than, at most, two sets of dishes. Still, there is enough, and in enough variety, for each sibling and each grandchild to have a pattern that is to his or her liking. Making the choice is like a birthday, or Christmas, only without the wrapping paper.

  My dishes, a mix of two different patterns (one set is a partial--platter and serving bowl, dessert plates, six saucers, no cups). (photo: KQJ)

Speaking of Christmas, that holiday in 1956 must have been a doozie. The bag of unwrapped presents, found in the dining room closet, can be dated because, in addition to the wooden train, it contained a cookbook, published in 1956, by the Dorcas Society of the Emanuel Lutheran Church in Manchester, CT.



In 1956 Greg, the youngest of the family, would have been a month old, and his older brothers barely two and not quite four respectively. I once asked his mother what it was like to have three boys so close together and she said, "I don't remember. It's all just a blur."  It's easy to see how a bag of presents could be put in a closet, to be dealt with later, and then forgotten. A packing box we found in the attic was postmarked with the same year. That box contained more wrapped presents, including decorative china, some unmentionable substances identifiable as chocolate only because of the box they were in, and a fruitcake that will be a tale for another day.