Johnson Brothers Dishes
My grandmother turned ninety years old. We gathered to celebrate her birthday and shared stories of family dogs and ballet recitals and vacation cabins and dresses sewn and events attended and meals eaten. On and on and on. Four generations of family together for a weekend. The memories flowed. Even as the weekend went on we wondered aloud what the kids would remember of the weekend and of their great grandmother.
Memory, not what happens, but what we remember happens, fascinates me. I think about it nearly every day.
I took a class called "Philosophy of History" once where we discussed this phenomenon. How can you be completely neutral? Even a camera captures moments and a video is boring unless it is edited.
I think of a friend who lost her boyfriend in a tragic accident this summer. They knew each other a finite amount of time. She remembers the moment they met and she remembers the moment he died. It seems that with a more manageable amount of time you can recreate your time with that person. And yet even then, are you creating your experience of them? Does it matter? Why are you doing it in the first place?
I shared with my friend an idea that I think a character in one of my novels with experiment with. In my book, a mother kills her 8 year old son in a car accident. She creates logs of every day of his life and tries to recall a memory for each of those days. It seems doable and overwhelming at the same time. Of course she can't do it. Some days have many memories and others are blank and some have events with question marks because she doesn't recall the exact date.
In a book I just read, the main character does something similar. He creates a museum filled with the memories of a relationship - cigarette butts and jewelry and cologne and salt shakers and quince graters. He desperately tries to make something important to everyone because it was important to him.
It reminds me of Pioneer Village, which reminds me of my grandmother in so many ways.
She took me there repeatedly as a child. It's close to her house and we would go wander through the exhibits of a compulsive collector. The entire development of the phone, for example - captured in a wall display that you can walk past and see the entire history. Grams would share stories of her own childhood in Omaha in the Depression and we once found the car that she remembered from her childhood with roll down plastic shades to keep out the rain. So I remember what she remembered and told me about. I remembered a story about a childhood birthday party of hers that I got wrong. It was the Omaha Athletic Club, we both remembered that, and she ate a great delicacy that she did not order, but enjoyed a great deal. We agreed about the basics, but not the details. I remembered her story slightly incorrectly. Like a version of the Telephone Game.
History and memory are complicated.
My mother recently took my Fiestaware dishes in exchange for her dishes. She worried that I regretted the decision. I do not. I love the Johnson Brothers stoneware with the familiar blue flower. I know the plates and canisters and bowls. They are my childhood.
The existentialist in me scoffs at the idea that stoneware is important. Maybe it is not important per se, but it is an anchor to memory and feeling. Just ask my daughter who was distraught that I traded the dishes of her childhood for the dishes of my childhood!
I won't get it right, but I will keep trying. And dishes? Mean something. Just ask my Grams. She made me go through the dishes display at Pioneer Village every time we went!
Memory, not what happens, but what we remember happens, fascinates me. I think about it nearly every day.
I took a class called "Philosophy of History" once where we discussed this phenomenon. How can you be completely neutral? Even a camera captures moments and a video is boring unless it is edited.
I think of a friend who lost her boyfriend in a tragic accident this summer. They knew each other a finite amount of time. She remembers the moment they met and she remembers the moment he died. It seems that with a more manageable amount of time you can recreate your time with that person. And yet even then, are you creating your experience of them? Does it matter? Why are you doing it in the first place?
I shared with my friend an idea that I think a character in one of my novels with experiment with. In my book, a mother kills her 8 year old son in a car accident. She creates logs of every day of his life and tries to recall a memory for each of those days. It seems doable and overwhelming at the same time. Of course she can't do it. Some days have many memories and others are blank and some have events with question marks because she doesn't recall the exact date.
In a book I just read, the main character does something similar. He creates a museum filled with the memories of a relationship - cigarette butts and jewelry and cologne and salt shakers and quince graters. He desperately tries to make something important to everyone because it was important to him.
It reminds me of Pioneer Village, which reminds me of my grandmother in so many ways.
She took me there repeatedly as a child. It's close to her house and we would go wander through the exhibits of a compulsive collector. The entire development of the phone, for example - captured in a wall display that you can walk past and see the entire history. Grams would share stories of her own childhood in Omaha in the Depression and we once found the car that she remembered from her childhood with roll down plastic shades to keep out the rain. So I remember what she remembered and told me about. I remembered a story about a childhood birthday party of hers that I got wrong. It was the Omaha Athletic Club, we both remembered that, and she ate a great delicacy that she did not order, but enjoyed a great deal. We agreed about the basics, but not the details. I remembered her story slightly incorrectly. Like a version of the Telephone Game.
History and memory are complicated.
My mother recently took my Fiestaware dishes in exchange for her dishes. She worried that I regretted the decision. I do not. I love the Johnson Brothers stoneware with the familiar blue flower. I know the plates and canisters and bowls. They are my childhood.
The existentialist in me scoffs at the idea that stoneware is important. Maybe it is not important per se, but it is an anchor to memory and feeling. Just ask my daughter who was distraught that I traded the dishes of her childhood for the dishes of my childhood!
I won't get it right, but I will keep trying. And dishes? Mean something. Just ask my Grams. She made me go through the dishes display at Pioneer Village every time we went!
posted by Lea at 8:23 PM
2 Comments:
I would love to have some of the dishes from my childhood back again. We hadthese sweet glass bowls that were super-ornate. We also had these really skinny glasses that I always loved, and then one day I found out they were just old shrimp cocktail jars.
Hm. It's funny when you never know the history of something until after it means something to you...
Dishes ARE important. I remember one time I was shopping at the GoodWill or some place like that and I found a set of dishes exactly like the ones my Mom had when I was a kid.
Exactly.
It was strange because she got them in the grocery store in Seward one piece at a time. They had this special going on for over a year where you could buy a different piece each week and got a discount depending on how much money you spent on the groceries. Beige stoneware with yellow and orange flowers.
I didn't buy the set because I already have hers.
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