OF COMBS AND COFFEE MUGS
If the latest news is leaving you cold or hot, depending on your disposition or how many nerves you have left, please be assured you are not alone. I’d rather eat dirt than focus on the crisis du jour for the length of time it would take to write this column. So let’s get back to basics.
Do you ever think about the mostly mundane things that we live with as having a life of their own? Take a moment to consider the items used in your everyday life that serve some useful purpose and for which you have some affection, but have very little intrinsic value. I suspect the first thing that many would think of is that favorite mug that most of us have. If it’s clean, it’s the one we use. In addition to being the favorite mug, it’s quite likely to have held that top spot for any number of years. Additionally, no one else would understand why it is so favored by you unless you told them.
Then there are things that we use every day that we don’t usually even think about. For example, I have had a comb for decades, probably bought at a drug store and probably not by me. It’s molded plastic, unmarked, and kind of a light green bordering on lime color. That color was something Mother would have been more likely to choose, so I suspect she bought the comb and I got it from her. Since it’s not that brittle kind of plastic like a pocket comb, it still has all its teeth. Unless I lose it, my green comb will continue to live its best life until combing and detangling my hair is not a daily pursuit.
It has had a good life, too, for a comb. It’s gone with me practically everywhere I’ve ever been. I looked it up, and my comb is better traveled than the average American. But then, chances are he’ll get tossed and end up in a landfill at the same time I end up in a human landfill. Even so, he’ll take centuries longer to decompose than I will. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, don’t you think?
On the other hand, there are things we have that we don’t use every day, but they have sentimental value. I have a few things that belonged to my great grandmother, including a simple milk jug, which sits on my desk holding various utensils (letter opener, pencils, highlighters, etc.) Like the comb, the mug lacks any marks, but maybe someone will recognize it as an old piece of crockery when the time comes for it to get a new home. But it won’t come with any remembrance of Ida Pitts Duke, described by one of her grandchildren as a “pistol,” which anyone from Texas knows is high praise when ascribed to a woman. There’s a lesson in that, too.
Finally, there are those things that are old and do have value. Maybe not in a crazy amount of dollars, but it carries a history, much of which is lost. It’s the old painting or sideboard or mirror that you see in someone’s house and ask if it’s a family piece. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it was found at an estate sale or an auction and sold off by those who didn’t appreciate it or need it to someone who did. That adds a layer of new history on it. But the old history is further removed, leaving the current possessor to wonder who had it before and how did it come to be here.
About 25 years ago, I bought such a piece from the estate of a well-known, well-to-do Dallas lady. A figural bisque piece of three aristocratic children playing some kind of romantic game, it dates from mid-19th-century France. It’s quite possible that the lady whose estate sold it to me had it for 50 years before her death. But that leaves about 75 years unaccounted for. Who had it originally? Who brought it to the United States? Whose houses did it decorate? Whose house will it decorate next? Will I and that Dallas lady become part of its lost history? Yet another lesson to consider.
Shakespeare said it best in MacBeth, first performed over 400 years ago. ”Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Well, we certainly do our share of strutting and fretting out here in the provinces, but the folks playing on the national and international stages are beating us hand over fist. Add to that all those tales being told by all those idiots with all that sound and fury.
It’s no wonder I’d rather talk about combs and coffee mugs. They at least signify something.
