My siblings and I decided to sell the family’s Florida house. Purchased in the early 1980s by my parents, their journey to Florida led to countless visits, side trips, and getting familiar with a different world. As the decades rolled, generations passed. Grand children were born, grew up, started their own families. Older members moved away and passed on.
With the eventual loss of my parents and increasing sibling retirements, we decided to hang on, sharing the tradition of continuing Florida adventures. New generations came. Then came new commitments, occasional health issues, and use declined. My parents provided a legacy of adventures for multiple generations, but the necessity of letting go became evident in its own time.
Most families face a time of natural evolution. End of an era; time to move on. Selling a home, downsizing, realizing a dream, simplifying lifestyle, death, remarriage. On we go.
Putting the emotion aside, what’s fascinating are the time markers that bring a sense of history. As drawers and cupboards are cleaned out, evidence of a different normal are apparent. Nowadays photo negatives are mostly a thing of the past. Houses have boxes of them. The really big negatives take you back to 1940s or earlier as you hold them up to the light to see family and friends of a time gone by. Cars of the ‘30s and 40’s, children’s toys, clothing, all so different. I miss talking to that persons from that era; so many have passed on.
Cleaning out a china cabinet one discovers the silver candlesticks, plates, trays and serving dishes so regularly polished in a different age. Now they lay wrapped in tissue paper, blackened with tarnish. I take a favorite candy dish and let the rest go with the house; polishing silver doesn’t sound attractive. The tools of entertaining have changed.
Every family has their stories. Cleaning out a house you find pieces of the original basis of the story: a souvenir, photos, newspaper articles, invitations, postcards, a piece of clothing, a work of art. It’s hard to know what to do with it all.
With passing eras, dialogue moves along as well. A davenport becomes a sofa and then a couch. A record player becomes a hi-fi, then a stereo, then a component system, then begins to fade away to the internet. A clutch becomes a pocketbook, then a purse. A range becomes a stove. Hose become nylons, then pantyhose, then seem to disappear altogether into tights. Cameras for family pictures all but disappear.
Changing eras. Is legacy in conflict with moving on? Not really. Legacy is made of opportunity, memory and love. It’s good to find a way to record essentials and pass them along to future generations, and let the individual trappings go.