Daily Post – Hand Me Downs – September 10, 2014

Clothes and toys, recipes and jokes, advice and prejudice: we all have to handle all sorts of hand-me-downs every day. Tell us about some of the meaningful hand-me-downs in your life.

I live amidst many memories and I cherish their presence.

Pinocchio, a book that sat on my father’s bookshelf when he was a child brings me joy. I like to look inside and read his name written in my grandmother’s hand, Jimmie Davis, Christmas 1943. In 1943 World War II was being fought across the water. Although far removed from the fighting, my father and his family lived in a state of preparedness for an air attack from the enemy. My grandfather worked in the Shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. If there had been an attack on our shores the Newport News Shipbuilding would have been a prime target for attack. Someday I will give this book to my oldest grandson.

I love these fashion sketches my mother drew the year I was born. I like to imagine her, large with child (me), passing the time away creating beautiful outfits. Her drawings have such a lovely style. The same fashion and decorating sense has carried over into everything she does today; anything she wears or decorates is lovely!

I cherish the Bibles of my grandparents. So often I will hold them in my hands, open the pages, and read some of the verses they found precious enough to underline or comment upon in the margins.

A dry sink built by my grandfather now holds toys for his great-great-grandchildren.

A cabinet built by my grandfather holds treasures too…

…a purse handed down from my great-grandmother…

…flowers pressed from eighth grade graduation, and a devotional book, once belonging to my grandmother.

I hear the ticking of my grandmother’s clock every day. Its chime often connects me to thoughts of her.

My great-grandmother used this iron to get the wrinkles out of her clothes and household linens. She would set it on the stove or beside the fire until it was hot. I am so grateful to have this in my home as a keepsake of her.

And last but not least, a throwback to a post I made about all my stacks of books. The love of books, and the books themselves, were given to me from my grandmother. She loved to read and when I think of her I see a sweet lady, curled into a corner of the couch, feet drawn up under her, smiling happily as she read her stories.