A few years back, when I lived in Santa Fe, NM, I was driving home and saw an old beaten table behind a furniture store. This table was covered in paint, coffee rings, scribbles, and generations of stories. I was so in love my knees were weak. After my U-turn and conversation with the store owner (who seemed surprised I wanted such a piece of ‘junk’) I was the new owner. They would deliver the table within the day.
My enthusiasm soon came to an end, that is, for when the delivery man arrived I saw that they had sanded and polished away all of the stories. My eyes welled up in tears.
‘What did you do!?’ I exclaimed. Uncharacteristically comfortable with displaying my hurt.
‘We fixed it for you!’ He beamed.
‘No, no….I loved it before.’ I said. In the back of my head yelling ‘YOU BURNED A LIBRARY!’
He seemed hurt, which made my hurt worse for it had nowhere to go. I forgave…albeit painfully.
What lingered with me after this experience was the longing I have for heirlooms. Seeds from grandmother’s sunflowers, family recipes, old stories and traditions passed along from one hand to another. They are all a ‘culture’ in that they multiply and feed upon the spirit of those that pass it along. As stories are told they grow richer and more complex like a sourdough start. A lullaby acquires the melody of grandmother and trills from mother, soon to be sung to a granddaughter with a new vibrato.
And though endings are inevitable, the fact we can choose to keep something alive is quite the gift. What an honor it is to do so. To tell the story one more time, so say their name one more time. To grow another sunflower and pass its seed. It is a holy thing and it makes me all choked up.
I painted this piece as symbol of devotion to the practice of keeping things alive. A woman sits in a patch of her heirloom strawberries next to her friend a big cat. *Fun fact- this is actually a marionette tiger I found at an antique store years ago and have loved and cared for ever since. I aged the canvas like that old table in Santa Fe I loved so much. Maybe this painting will one day be an heirloom.
And so, my friend….patch things up to pass them down. Remember a name so you can retell. Memorize a song so you can sing it around a fire.
Decide, in each moment, to keep something here a little longer.