Heirlooms

They have been in our family for generations. Or perhaps I expect that they will be, from here on out. My grandmother’s costume jewelry and her pastel colored loveseat. My grandfather’s bipolar disorder and love of squirrels. The recipe for Moon Cookies. The braided rugs that were as knotted as my Pop Pop’s knuckles. Whatever newest technology that will deliver “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Stealing Home.” An awareness of all of the lyrics to “More Than Words.” These are the things that I will point to and tell my kids – that’s us. That’s our family.

Then there are other things - important things - that I wonder what will happen to them when the time comes. What does a person do with the ashes of several beloved pets? Right now they live with us, in small ornate boxes, next to their pictures and the television. It feels right to have them in our cozy space, but instead of being curled up at our feet, they are packed neatly away on shelves. I cannot bring myself to think about what is to be done with them, because I cannot bring myself to think of the event that would force me to think about such things.

There are also the photo albums. I will show them to my children and explain that once upon a time, we had photographs that we could hold in our hands and hang on walls and put in books. There are pictures from the 70s, the telltale orange cast of that photo development technology. They have rounded corners and matte finishes. They are filled with young versions of my mother and people who I don't know, but who seem happy and somehow stylish in their crisp polyester outfits. They are laughing or looking at the camera with the awareness of the person behind it or the preciousness of film. They are wearing makeup and eating from nice dishes, because this was some sort of occasion where people were taking pictures. The fattest photo albums are filled with baby pictures of myself and my brother. They are cracking away from their binding after too many viewings by too many versions of ourselves through the years. Will he take his and I take mine? Or will we take each other's, so that we can remember when we are living states apart?

The various Christmas ornaments have always been owned by one of us in our heads, whether or not they were originally bought for us. Some are very clear. They are gingerbread people who wear "Daughter" or "Son" on their chests. They are school pictures set in crumbling clay. They are our names painted on glass balls with confetti inside. Others are vaguely but seriously connected to us through a story, a memory, or our simple insistence on always being the one to hang it on the tree as we turn on its music or pull its cord or sit with it and remember.

None of it means anything to anyone but us. If, years down the road, these things were to end up in a consignment store, they wouldn't catch much of a second glance or more than fifty cents. But to us, these fragments are precious because they remind us of ourselves. For now, however, the heirlooms I focus on are the seeds I put into the ground. They are unaltered, self-propagating plants that make ugly, delicious tomatoes, or strange colors of vegetation that have been passed down for generations. They are not made by corporations to resist pesticides, and they are not big, beautiful prizewinners at the county fair. They are just something that comes from my own backyard where the Sesame Street swing set used to sit until it rusted. They give us fresh salads and jewels of berries to eat on the picnic table in the unrelenting summer heat. I suspect that in some number of years, I will hear the names - Amish Paste, Black Prince, Green Zebra - and feel much the same as when I twist the Christmas ornament in my fingers.