I have been thinking about stuff. The things we own. Especially the ones that tell our story.
I clicked a video on Facebook last week and watched Rachael Ray tell about a fire that destroyed her New York home. I don’t give much attention to celebrity news, but I have enjoyed her cooking and talk shows. Home has always seemed important to her, and I like that, so the headline got my attention. In the video she shares that the fire burned her notebooks, drawings, and photo albums, and claimed her musician husband’s music charts. Their “life’s work.” My heartstrings stretched when she spoke of losing cards and letters that held her mom’s handwriting, which has severely deteriorated because of macular degeneration.
I know the treasure of letters and handwriting. They are almost all I have left of my daddy.
When I began to write two years ago, I purchased a small fireproof and waterproof safe. I could not bear the thought of losing the cards and letters daddy wrote to me. They are the inspiration for this blog (and maybe one day a book) so I want and need to keep them intact. My mom has since given me his Sunday School lessons and notes, the journals he kept while working in the coal mines, and pictures from his growing up and military service. Those are tucked into drawers, boxes, and bags. After watching Rachael Ray’s story, I said to my husband, “I need another safe.”
My mind has also wandered over the past several days to the people out west whose entire lives have been all but erased by wildfires, and those along the coast who are similarly impacted by hurricanes and flooding. Their immediate thoughts must be intent on where they will sleep and what they will eat. I wonder if in the back of their minds they are also mourning irreplaceable family heirlooms.
A weathered brown box hangs in my mom’s kitchen. Hand-painted words decorate the front: “Lollipops For Good Little Girls And Good Little Boys.” The box has been on her kitchen wall since I was in the 4th grade when my parents remodeled our kitchen. It belonged to my great-grandmother, Mama Bailey. I do not know exactly how old it is, but my mom remembers it from her childhood so I would venture at least 60 years.
I asked Mom to refresh my memory on the story of the box. She reached out to her cousin Bill, whose dad, my great-uncle Clifton, made the box. Bill writes:
Wow. That was a long time ago… We had one hanging in our kitchen. He made Mama Bailey one and maybe a few other aunts. Every time someone would see one and say something to dad, he would make them one. Of course, Mama Bailey was the only one that kept her box full for all us grandkids. Everyone else would just let them run out but not her. As I recall it took Dad about 2 days to make one and most of that time was for the paint to dry and he would make them outside and the freshly painted boxes would be hanging from a pine tree branch by a piece of wire to dry. He did all the writing and painting on it freehand with a paint brush.
My parents kept the box full of Dum-Dums candy. Daddy loved to give the lollipops, we called them suckers, when kids would visit. One day I hope the box will hang in my kitchen, still filled with lollipops and love.
The Bible cautions against loving our stuff. It’s not going to last. House fires, wildfires and hurricanes prove that. Instead, Matthew 6 instructs us to focus on the treasure we have in heaven, to seek God as the center of our lives instead of stuff. Eternal impact. That’s what matters.
Rachael Ray called her notebooks and journals her “life’s work.” I suggest our life’s work, her life’s work, is not entirely found in the stuff we can see, touch and hold. It may also be defined in ways that are intangible. I do not know Rachael Ray but if I did, I would tell her that her life’s work is also found outside her burned home. It is written in many meals shared around countless kitchen tables. I, for one, made a chili recipe from her magazine just last night.
It’s OK to cherish journals, photos and lollipop boxes. They are part of us. What matters is the way we value those things, and what they say about our heart’s intent. I hope my love for that lollipop heirloom defines me as someone who loves my family, my story, and my roots because those are the treasures that will last.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
(Matthew 6: 19-21)
