Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder - or WHY Did You Keep These??

Some stories about a few of the items I received in Mom's stuff.

About this beige and blue pot.. Ok, I admit, to the uneducated eye this may not appear to be the most beautiful piece of pottery ever seen. However, it is not what it looked like on the outside that endeared it to me.. but what was inside! As long as I can remember this was our cookie jar. And, we all know how I love cookies! LOL It was usually tucked away in a cupboard or pantry but there is no more beautiful sight to a child than a well filled cookie jar about to be opened. YUM The original lid was broken early on, however, my ever resourceful dad found an old silver pot lid that fit it just right and was the lid ever after.. hmmm.. wonder when that disappeared? Anyway, I suspect my fascination with pottery may very well have been born with this unremarkable, well loved, cookie jar. :)


This is an ankle bracelet that Mom wore every day thru High School. You can't read it but it says 'Pat'. I photographed it with the dime so you could see how tiny her ankles were.. (I could never get it around mine) She was always a little vain about her pretty legs and feet- for good reason! It makes me more that a little sad that she didn't manage to pass them on to me... No, I got the 'football legs'. sigh.
Mom LOVED this charm bracelet. There was a story behind every charm.. as I recall, several of them were given to her by boyfriends and others picked up in Tijuana etc. It is well worn and tarnished but dear to me because it was something she treasured.

Oh, my.. there is a story behind these plates. Grandma Reay had a special cupboard where she kept dishes that she had inherited from the Henry side of the family-her mother (Cora Henry) and Aunt Elizabeth (Spencer) who raised her. It was understood that these were not to be used, but kept safely. As Mom tells it, Grandma wasn't keen on her kids staying home from school- education was IMPORTANT to that former school teacher. So, whenever Mom decided she was too sick to go to school, instead of tucking her in bed with some chicken soup and TLC, that would be the day Grandma would decide it was time to clean out the special cupboard. Up Mom would go on the rickety step stool, and hand down each precious dish, with fear and trepidation lest she should break one, to Grandma's waiting hands. Then, after each having been carefully washed and dried, back up Mom would go to replace them. The whole process was nerve wracking and not particularly conducive to recovery from illness.. Needless to say. sick days home were few and far between in the Reay household! LOL Anyway, when Mom inherited her share of the dishes from the special cupboard, she also inherited a healthy respect for those dishes. They stayed carefully packaged in sturdy boxes and seldom saw the light of day most of the time she owned them. Well, after Dad died, I was helping her go thru things and we came across these boxes. I helped her unwrap them and did my best to convince her that it was ridiculous for these treasures to be hidden away. She now lived alone, no one else was around to break them, so she should get them out and enjoy them! I even bullied her into buying some plate hangers so we could hang these particular plates up on her kitchen wall. Wouldn't you know, that in the process of me putting them up, one slipped off the nail in the wall and broke! I was heartsick. So, sadly, the three rose plates are now two . Mom was very sweet about it, assuring me that it was just a thing etc. but it was horrible. And, now those two precious plates have come to my house. Umm... yeah, I think they are going up in my special dish cupboard. I don't think I could live with the guilt of breaking another one!!
I just had to put this horn in this gallery of treasures. I bought this for a Christmas present for Dad as a joke when he got to the point of having to use a walker. I told him he could use it to get Mom's attention as well as warn people to get out of his way when he was out in public. He did get a chuckle out of it and promptly figured out a way to mount it on his walker. Actually, it turned out to be more practical than I ever dreamed it would. Early in the morning of January 1st I was downstairs asleep when I was awakened by the KA-OO-GAH of Dad's horn. I went upstairs to see what was going on and found Dad flat on the floor- he had slipped off the bed and couldn't get up. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt, just unable to maneuver himself back up. Well, I knew I couldn't get him up by myself so I went back down and woke up Jeanie. As we walked into the bedroom, Dad flashed us a big grin and said; "Happy New Year!" Ya gotta laugh!