Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Family Heirlooms

heir·loom -noun \ˈer-ˌlüm\
1
: a piece of property that descends to the heir as an inseparable part of an inheritance of real property
2
: something of special value handed on from one generation to another

I want to preserve the stories behind the items in our lives that we consider heirlooms. I think most of them will meet this definition from Webster’s. And I have decided the best place to record the information about each piece is right here on the blog – with the greatest intentions of one day printing it all out for a little scrapbook album, of course. So each month I’ll share a little something from our lives and what we know about it. I welcome corrections from family members!

The first is a fairly new acquisition. May I present what Craig fondly calls The Singing Mexicans. These little garden statues belonged to his Aunt Thelma who passed away last year. As the story goes she and her first husband traveled a good bit before he passed away and these were picked up on one of their many trips to California over 30 years ago. Soon after she’d re-married, her second husband did some cleaning for a yard sale and included The Singing Mexicans. And, you guessed it, Aunt Thelma was not happy about this – so unhappy, in fact, that she had the husband track down the buyer to get them back. Turns out he had to pay more than he sold them for, but they remained in Aunt Thelma’s garden for the next 20 plus years. After hearing this story Craig loved them even more and they now sit, singing, in our garden.

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