Mary Richmond Design

Playing House

For many years I have collected the little things of my grandmother's and mothers's and put them in boxes in the cellar or in the eaves (our sideways version of an attic in an old house). I also collect pottery made by people I know or by people I meet when I travel and years ago I started to collect funny old salt and pepper shakers because they were something affordable I could look for at flea markets and yard sales. I also collect bird books and nature guides and have a growing collection of Cape Cod history books. Many of these I use in my work but I also just like looking through them. Old books are just different than the books of today.

After  we cleaned out my mom's house and my mother in law's house we had a lot of STUFF that we weren't quite sure what to do with. For about a year we just pondered it. This past year we have sorted through to find the things we really want to live with and have let go many of the other things. Some we have sold, some we have given away and some we have taken to the swap shop or thrift shops. We decided that if we are going to keep it we are going to use it. We may display it or not but it must be used at least once during the year (such as holiday items) or it has to go away.

Our house is tiny and our storage areas even smaller. You know those teeny tiny closets people laugh at on HGTV? Ours aren't even half that size. Those double door closets popular in the 70's and 80's look darn right huge to us and the big walk ins of today look like our bedrooms....oh well!

Anyway, we are finally nearing the end of all our sorting and pondering and here are some pictures of some of the things we've done so far....

These are some of the little knick knacks that my grandmother had and that remind me of her. The little couple on the bottom right are china and were on her wedding cake. The little girl has a movable arm that can hook into his elbow. How cool is that? My grandmother grew up in Pennsylvania and the little iron people date back to her mother. She moved to the Boston area as a young married woman and the Boston Swan Boat reflects one of her early trips to Boston Common.

This is my pottery collection. Each piece is made either by someone I know well or was a gift from someone I love. They each make me smile for different reasons.

The top picture includes the metal pieces we have accumulated, including an old oil lamp from my husband's family, my mother's baby cup and my dad's harmonica.

Today would be my dad's 80th birthday and tomorrow would be my mom's 77th. My dad passed away at 62 and my mom at 68. Having these things around certainly doesn't replace them but knowing they were also parts of their lives reminds me of happy times I had with them. My parents were pretty poor most of their lives and there is not a lot of material value to the things they left behind. There is, however, so much value in everything they were and everything they gave to us that each memory is precious in its own way.

Do you keep the old family trinkets and things? Do you collect things? Do you display them? 

Company Best

Sometimes I like to get out a few of my best or favorite pieces of china and glass to use when company comes. When I was young I thought that it was sort of funny when people did this but as I got older I came to appreciate it more and more. After my mom died we found lots of old china and glass of my grandmother's packed away. Since then I've tried to use pieces here and there when special friends come by. We have always used the special china, glass and silver for holidays but they seem so few and far between these days. 

Last week two girlfriends I haven't seen in ages were stopping by for lunch. I had these few old plates of my grandmother's, a few etched glasses that were thin and elegant, my great aunt's silver and some lovely linen napkins that were tucked away in a box years ago by my grandmother. The vase was my mother's.

It was a lovely festive lunch. I'm sure we could have even used paper and plastic and still had a wonderful time but everyone loved using the special things and told their own stories of things they loved from their families.

Can't wait for another excuse to get a little fancy....which if you know me, is sort of funny ;-)

Honoring a Memory

My grandmother was a wonderful storyteller and when I was growing up I spent much of my time with her listening to stories of her childhood, her adolescence and later, when I was newly married and a mom, her years of being a young wife and mother.

Although she collected and kept things in a way that would shame many museum curators and make her daughters shake their heads in despair she had her special favorites and her doll, Ruby, was one of these.

She received Ruby when she was just a few years old and Ruby was her most precious companion while she was growing up. By the time I saw Ruby she was in pretty bad shape. Her eyes had fallen into her head, her arms and legs had become detached and she was mostly bald. Her bisque head was still lovely and unblemished, though, and my grandmother got all teary when she saw what had happened to her beloved doll. Maybe someday someone will send her to the doll hospital and fix her up, she said.

Many years after my grandmother's death I found the box with what remained of Ruby in it. It took me a while to find someone who could repair her and quite a bit of money but several months later Ruby came home with me, a much better looking doll than when she left.

She never had any clothes and I always meant to make her a dress. My grandmother made me doll clothes all the time when I was a girl and I made them for my own children. I put her in an old dress I had from when I was a baby but it never fit right. She sat in her rocking chair and never complained.

Life is busy these days and making a fancy doll dress just isn't on my agenda at the moment so when I happened across DollCloset on Etsy I asked if she could make a holiday dress for Ruby. Her price was right and her attention to detail is exquisite. We exchanged information and measurements and within a week she was done! The beautiful dress arrived yesterday and here is Ruby all decked out in my mother's old childhood chair, looking pretty. My grandmother would be thrilled. I think after the holidays I will sit down and make her a full outfit, including bloomers and a slip as befits her elegant nature.

Ruby will be 100 years old this Christmas! My grandmother left us 22 years ago but as long as Ruby is around a visual piece of her remains with me always. Imagine the stories she could tell and the things that she has seen!

The Mom Who Was Magic

Here's to all moms who are magic everywhere. You may not know you are magic, but you are.

My own mom has been gone seven years now and although she and I certainly had our less than magic moments there are certain things about my mom that will always remain as magic in me.

My mother had one of those lives that turned on a pivotal moment and from that moment on nothing was as she thought it would be. Her heart was broken in so many places she wasn't at all sure how to put it all back together but she did. Within the same year she was told her sweetheart was not allowed to marry her because he was the nephew of a Catholic Cardinal and she was a protestant, her father who was her personal hero and number one fan up to that point left her mother and the family to move in with his new secretary and girlfriend, never to be seen by them again (he died suddenly several years later) and she had to leave halfway through her freshman year of college at the dream university she had studied for years to get into because her bereft and now bankrupt mother needed her at home (refer back to father leaving family....)

My mother met my father a few years later (people still referred to it as a rebound), married quickly and I was born exactly nine months and one day later (a fact my grandmother never quite got over!) She was 21.

My own dad left when I was 9 and my mother was a single mother through most of the sixties. She was tough, she was scared, she worked her buns off and she made sure we were 'well brought up' and educated. My mother was a small woman but you didn't mess with her. When she was angry mountains shook, oceans trembled and volcanoes stirred. We tried to hide. Sometimes that worked, mostly it didn't.

When my mother was good, though, she was the best. She read us stories endlessly and told us stories of her own growing up, her family, her dreams....after my dad left she had boxes of memorabilia she would pull out of the closet and we knew well the stories and dreams of her real first love, her father whom we would never meet and our own father's family. She always wanted to be a writer but never sat down to do it. She was too busy working, too busy taking care of a family, too busy volunteering throughout the community but the stories still came out.

After my mother died I knew I wanted this little white vase. My mother broke her leg in a toboggan run when she was twelve, the story goes. A young man brought her this vase with violets in it and she kept it by her bedside. A family friend came by for a visit with her son, one of my mom's best friends, and upon seeing the vase and the flowers and getting the scoop she turned to her son and growled, "Donald, are you a man or a mouse?" She cuffed his ear and the two left. About a half hour later Donald reappeared with a puzzle which he shoved onto the table. "Here," he said. "My mom wants you to have this." Don and my mom remained friends all her life and I can still hear them laughing uproariously every time I look at this vase. She put violets in it every year and it epitomizes something about my mother for me.

The book is one I just found used and bought at Amazon. I am so excited to find this lovely, wonderful book. In my family we were huge Paul Gallico fans. We loved "Thomasina" and "The Silent Miaow" the best and when my mother found this book in the library I must have been around 14 and my sister 11. We all wanted to read it first so she decided to read it aloud to us. It is the most wonderful, magical story and one of my favorite memories of my mother, my sister and me. We were all simply transfixed by this book and if memory serves me we actually read it aloud more than once. My sister was so excited that I had found this book that she was going to try and find another. We were way too old in today's world for reading aloud but for us it was a truly magical family moment in a time of political unrest and turmoil.

The book just arrived....in time for Mother's Day!

When I look at this vase and this book I can remember the magic that was my mother and marvel at the life she made in spite of all her brokenness and all her illness. She was diagnosed at 42 with a vigorous and life threatening cancer which she barely survived but then continued to thrive for another 25 years. She was quite a lady. Thanks, mom, for all you gave me. I haven't forgotten....

Reflections

We lost my father in law late last week. He had been very ill, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last spring. Family had gathered and everyone was here, which was good.

He was 83.

It has been a busy and sad week and I don't really have much else to say. Just checking in.

I took some of the out of towners on a beach tour yesterday while my husband and his sisters met with the lawyer. Soon everyone will disperse. It's been nice having family meals and long talks together every night. It will seem much quieter here when everyone leaves.

The grandparents are all gone now. He was the last. Now it's us who are the grandparents. Now there's a scary thought....Are we ready for this? Most of the time I still feel like a kid who doesn't know what I'm doing.....

My Grandmother's Dishes....

How cute is this little Meito China service for one? I found it deep in a box of glasses and dishes my grandmother had carefully wrapped and put away.

Boxes and boxes of glasses and dishes and china and more are being unwrapped one at a time and I find myself feeling both wistful and frustrated with my family as I do this.

All these years (about 25) these boxes sat unopened in my mother's basement. I'll get to them someday she would say. Even after she herself died it took another six years for my sister and I to go through the boxes. The numbers were daunting. And there were so many filled with clippings and trash that it was disheartening. The papers were full of mold and made us miserable, never mind the sad stories that unwound through so many of them. I find myself wishing I knew these little treasures were there the whole time my kids grew up. We could have been using them. Instead, they come as my children are grown and starting homes of their own and there is literally no tradition or family in any of these for them. How sad is that?

For years I was part of an art group that painted together on Wednesday mornings and we always served tea. How lovely it would have been to have my grandmother's tea cups and plates to use.

Of course they can still be used but the years that I lost with them make me feel wistful and sad.

And where were these beautiful pink serving dishes when we had holiday dinners? We've always used my grandmother's delicate pink water glasses and dessert plates but who knew these serving pieces even existed? Surely my mother must have known. She must have grown up with them.

You have to have seen the piles of boxes to really understand the daunting task it was to consider going through them. And you have to know how many boxes were filled with clippings and articles and restaurant place mats and matchbook covers. I understand that the task overwhelmed my mother. It took my sister and I these last three months.

These tablecloths got water stained and have rust spots on them even after being carefully washed. I will still use some of them. There are dressers full of embroidered dresser scarves, napkins, guest towels and bridge table cloths, so many we will never use them all. There are vintage cloths and vintage towels, all fun and festive and not something everyone will use every day. I will keep some and give away the rest.

I guess the moral of this little story is to use the special lovely things you have. Don't store them away.  Don't wait for that perfect day. Today is the perfect day to enjoy what we have.

Get out that nice china tea cup and have a spot of tea. Don't forget the embroidered napkin and tablecloth while you're at it!

My Mother's Dolls.....

As many of you know I've been going through endless boxes from my mother's estate. We can't keep everything and I just put my mother's dolls up for sale over on Craig's List Boston. Every now and then she would go up to the attic and take these down to show us but I don't think she looked at them once she married my stepdad in 1974. Every now and then she would mention them but even when her granddaughters were showing interest in doll collecting she didn't share these with them. The granddaughters went on to other interests and none are willing to take these at this point. I can't help but wonder if that would be different if they had been shared while my mother was alive. I think she wanted to keep them safe. They were safe but they were also unloved and dolls need to be loved, I think.

It's odd to have the mammy doll and Indian doll in today's world but both were given to my mother when she was born in 1932. It goes to show how much things have changed since then. The Indian doll was made by a tribe in Maine and the mammy doll came from a relative in Pennsylvania. It's hard to imagine that such things were done and considered normal but then as I look at the "foreign" dolls they are certainly steretyped as well. I don't know if you can even find such dolls today.

There are other dolls as well and we have had a few restored and will keep them. For instance, I have my grandmother's beautiful German made doll that she received when she was 2. I am also keeping my mother's favorite doll, a Sonja Henny doll.

This little Gerber Baby was given to my mother as a baby gift. My grandmother insisted it looked just like my mother.

It's sad but no one in the family wants these dolls and no one has space to display or store them so it is time to let them go. They are mostly in great condition and it would be nice if the collection went as one piece. If you know anyone who might be interested, please let me know.

It's so weird going through all these things my mother and grandmother treasured. On the other hand I have to remember that these were all in storage for a long, long time. They were treasured more in idea and memory than in reality. In reality they were barely thought of.

It's a difficult and lengthy process going through all these boxes and keepsakes and letting most of them go. It makes me realize how small and insignificant our lives really are. We all know it's not about the stuff we accumulate and yet we keep accumulating it and holding onto it as if it is truly the key to our past, the key to our heart.

In many ways letting these things go is very freeing. There has been so much family drama around some of these things that letting them go is letting go of the drama, too. Most of the dramas have not been positive so why not let them go?

Family Myths and Stories

Many years ago I read that all families have basically the same myths and stories. The names, places, timelines and circumstances vary of course but the thesis was that the same themes run through all family stories that get passed down through generations.

If I remember correctly one can count on every family having a story about a black sheep, a lost fortune, love gone wrong, talent unrecognized, a fateful encounter and so on. This idea fascinated me so much at the time I admit I look for it and so far I have not been disappointed. There is something so universal about family life, especially extended family life. The whole multi ringed circus and drama of humanity plays out in each of our lives if we are open to seeing it.

In my family there were all these stories and more. Many of the stories revolved around those who tried to raise themselves out of immigrant status and uneducated poverty using only their bootstraps, integrity and faith. The reality of these humble but proud stories often differs from the stories we were told growing up and as I go through my mother's and grandmother's things more and more pieces of certain puzzles fit together.

My mother was in love with the idea of talent. She was sure it was inherited and she would try to trace every bit of musical, literary or artistic flare of talent to someone who had come before. In her mind we were all connected by a very complicated genetic maze with many arrows and notes.

My mother wanted to be a writer but she had too much fear and too huge a self editor living in her to ever actually do it. It made me sad to realize as she got older and older that she was really never going to do it. She left nothing but some notes and attempted starts at a play she was going to co write with a friend many years ago. She read voraciously all her life and read writing and literary magazines and journals,too, hoping someday to write and submit something wonderful. In some ways I think the family myth of unrequited talent was way more powerful and intriguing to her than any lost fortune or love gone wrong, though she had both of those, too. There was a dark romance to talent unrealized that was both thrilling and seductive to her.

Her father had been very poor but well educated, his Irish German family convinced that education would guide him out of poverty. He worked as a salesman most of his life but also wrote short stories and poems, many of which he submitted to various publications and publishers in the 1930's and 40's. My grandmother would labor over the typewriter after the children were in bed, transcribing word for word his sentences and paragraphs. He sent out lots of inquiries and recieved lots of rejections. From what I know, he was never published and eventually gave up. I have boxes of his stories as well as the rejections he got for each of them.

As I look over his writing in light of some other things I have learned I wonder why he didn't write what he knew. He wrote mostly pulp mystery sort of things, something he certainly didn't know much about. In one of my grandmother's boxes I found a set of paperback mysteries with a note inside. They were written by my grandfather's best grade school chum. Was he trying to emulate him? There's no one left to ask.

In the meantime the stories, which really weren't very good, will fade away, as will any memories of this man who made such deep impressions on his daughters. They are all deceased now. I hold the envelope with what's left of these faded dreams. Do I toss it? Will anyone else ever care? It's a funny thing to be left with all these family papers, linens and photographs. I don't have room for them all. And somewhere inside me stirs a story and a series of collages to keep these humble memories alive.

Accidental Gardens and Other Things....

If you were to drive up to my house, this is what you would see from the street. It's a tiny Cape Cod style house with a very steep roof pitch. It's very cute and we love it. Except for the two years I tried out living in Mashpee Commons we've been in the house about 24 years.

I love gardens. I love flowers. And I'm a horrible gardener. I plant things and hope they grow. Every year I add something I hope will stay and most of the time, it does. Not only does it stay, it usually mulitiplies. The house was built in 1929 and must inspire loyalty. It has only had one other owner. After her family was grown and gone the woman who owned my house planted bushes and flowers everywhere and much of the plantings remain, though many have had to be seriously pruned and trimmed. In the front of the house she had planted ferns on one side. The tree that used to shade this part of the house came down in storm winds a while back but the ferns seem to survive even with the morning sun they now get.

I just leave them. There's a huge white azalea and in the spring there are hundreds of lily of the valley plants that came forth from the few I transplanted from the back yard.

My window boxes are scraggly this year, due to the heat and lack of rain. I water them daily but they would prefer rain, I know.

Here is a view from the other side of the house, showing one of two hydrangeas. There's also lots of bee balm and a butterfly bush in there as well as phlox that will soon be blooming. There's phlox on the other side as well.

Flanking the front door you can see two huge hosta plants. They were here when we moved in and I have planted hosta all along the side fence and elsewhere throughout the yard by thinning these two monsters.

This is by far my favorite garden. Some years I get it together to plant vegetables here. Even when I don't do that I spread my compost. My best garden ever grew from compost one summer. I had lettuce, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, broccoli and even some things I couldn't recognize at first. They all grew from seeds in the compost.

This year I cleared the plot but never got to planting my tomatoes or basil. I've been weeding it, though, allowing the Queen Anne's lace to grow and now have a lovely patch to show for my trouble. I know other people work really hard to keep weeds out of the garden but I'm not one of them. I even let fleabane and yellow sorrell hang out with my potted plants.

So much for planning, huh? Sometimes the accidental flowers, both literal and figurative, are the best anyway, don't you think?

After the Storm

Yesterday a huge storm blew in and all through the night hard rain and even harder wind blew and howled, knocked and hammered our homes, the landscape and our shore.

The storm was so loud throughout the night that I don't think many of us got much sleep. The cats roamed, the dog panted and I ended up sitting up reading long into the early morning hours.

By eight or so this morning the wind and rain subsided.

After finishing writing and illustrating the article I had due this morning my daughter and I drove down Cape with her two little boys to see the surf. There was no surf at all in the bay but the outer Cape had more than enought to make up for it. We arrived at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham just as the astronomical high tide (due to new moon and storm combined) was turning. There was no beach to speak of and in the second picture you can see what used to be the marsh totally flooded. The end of the spit was also completely under water, something that doesn't bode well for the birds that were beginning to nest there.

The power of the sea always leaves me silent. There's not really much to say in the face of her fury. Just get out of the way. The beach and cliffs took a terrible beating in this storm, as they have in other storms. The beach is not a stable, static thing, but a moving living sandy entity of its own. There is no time when that is more obvious than on a day like today.

My little grandson was in awe of all the "big waves" as he called them. This last shot is from Nauset Light Beach, a little farther down the road. You can't see it in this picture but the water closest to the land was yellow brown from all the sand it was moving.

The stairs to this and other beaches along the coast were cordoned off to keep people off the sand and away from the ferocity of the sea. The stairs to this beach were actually lifted off the beach by several feet, showing how much sand had already been washed away this morning. Much of that sand will be brought back in by the waves later today and this week. It is a constantly moving, changing thing.

Coast Guard Beach is where Henry Beston of "The Outermost House" spent a year in a beach cabin. The cabin washed away about 20 or so years ago and on a day like today it is not hard to imagine the great shipwrecks that often occurred off this bit of coast before the Cape Cod Canal was built.

There's something elemental and awe inspiring about a storm like this.