Tuesday's Treasures--Lost and Found

I originally found this antique pen nib display case at an antiques store when we lived in Kentucky. It's been "lost" since we moved to this house over three years ago but we found it again this weekend in a fit of organization and cleaning. Here's how it got lost:

The move to this house was more disorganized than any of our other moves. Tom had started his new job in Illinois, we closed on both houses in January of 2003, and moved all of our belongings up here--well, sort of.

Jake was a senior in high school that year and we since didn't want to move him to a new school his senior year, the boys and I stayed back in Ohio until graduation. We rented a little one bedroom, second story apartment in an old, Victorian house across from the Root Candle Factory in Medina, Ohio. We took as little as possible to the tiny apartment--there wasn't room for much. I slept on a futon in the living room and the one, large bedroom had three beds in it; one for each of the boys. Even though we were in cramped quarters, our oldest son, John, came and stayed with us at the apartment on weekends from his studies at Ashland University. There was always a full house.

The rest of the apartment consisted of the tiniest bathroom you have ever seen, a small kitchenette with about a foot of counterspace, and a fair sized living room. Books were housed in plastic milk boxes, and the furniture was all the little bits and pieces of old hand me down stuff that we had saved for the boys "for when they got their first apartments." Same thing with dishes and pots and pans. We took as little as possible so that there would be as little as possible to have to move up to Illinois at the end of the adventure. Enough furniture to have a place to sleep and sit, enough pots and pans and dishes to be able to cook and eat, enough clothes--but not too many because there was no room to store them--books, computer and TV.

We didn't get the dogs until after we moved up here, but we did have our two cats. They were supposed to stay up at the house with Tom but after the first couple of weeks, the kids and I missed them so much that Tom brought them back to live with us at the little apartment.

Believe it or not, we had fun in that little place with just the minimal comforts of life. It was an adventure. Tom made the 7 hour trip "home" every other weekend, and then we would have all five of us together again in that little place. But that wasn't enough; there were friends and family to spend time with before our final move to a new state, so frequently we would have family or friends over for dinner and to spend the evening with us. It was a lively place--a full house--and we have a lot of good memories of that time. We learned to do without and "make do" in those six months and we really appreciated those times when we were all together.

Now, you're wondering what in the world all that has to do with the old display case, aren't you? Well, that's the way it is with treasures and memories. They get all mixed up together, don't they?

It was a disorganized move. We were moving into two places at the same time. We had very little time in which to do it. The boys and I came up to the house in Illinois when our things were moved up here. We had less than a week to unpack and get the house organized before we returned to Ohio. To save time, we opened the boxes labeled "basement," took a cursory peek inside, and quickly decided whether we needed to unpack the box or if it could be moved to a storage room in the basement of the new house. So now you know what happened to my old display case. It was in one of the first boxes to be stowed away, deep in the storage room, way back in a dark a space under the basement steps.

It took me a while to miss it, even after we made the final move. Once I finally did remember I hadn't seen it in the new house, I made several half-hearted attempts to find it, but that only succeeded in making our organized mess in the basement into a disorganized mess.

I was delighted to find it again after all this time. I like seeing it next to my drawing board again. I like the memories it evokes. Memories that are only tangentially related to the object at hand.

But that's the way it is with memories, isn't it?

Related Tags: Hunt Pens, antiques, Medina, Ohio, Root Candle Company, family memories, Tuesday Treasure

Other Tuesday Treasures can be found here: Faith