Take What Your Mama Gave You

May 2015, By Nicole Langelier.

I am writing this on the back of a visit to my grandmother in California. In fact, I am at the airport right now after a teary goodbye.

My grandmother – Nana Banana – Banana for short, is 92. She is hard-headed and can be stubborn, and she knows how to hold a grudge like it’s nobody’s business – but, she is also the most loving, caring and not to mention sassy person I know. I am blessed to know her and to be her granddaughter.

Banana, the 92-year-old fireball, is at ‘that’ stage in her life. She is transitioning from independent to dependent living. She is downsizing from a 2-bedroom apartment where she lived by herself for 13 years, to a single room in an assisted living centre. She is struggling with the transition to the point where it sometimes seems as if someone had cut off her arm, and it was almost too hard to watch.

I did what I could to help her move (my aunt, uncle and mother have done the rest), but it is a big job and a slow process due primarily to the fact that she wants to keep EVERYTHING. Letting go of her belongings too large and too plentiful to fit in her tiny new home means letting go of her life and her history in a way, and it has really made me think about the value of our stuff, and the objects that have real meaning.

On this my thoughts were two fold – firstly, how we infuse everyday objects with such meaning throughout our lives only to sell them for peanuts or give them away at the end or close to the end, and how silly it seems that we gave such importance to them in the first place – and secondly how the things that do have meaning should be cherished and shared and passed down. (Real) meaning equals value whether it has monetary value or not, and not all stuff is created equal.

I wish I could decorate my home with the things that meant so much to my grandmother – I wish I could take her furniture and her lamps and her art back to Australia with me, but I can’t. Hopefully it will remain in the family – the things that have a story and a history like the rug she bought in Morocco with my grandfather some 60 years ago, or the gorgeous Mexican lamp with an intricately cast metal base and silk shade that must have weighed 20 kilos (I would have taken it in my carry on if it hadn’t). Passing these things on along with their stories is how we maintain our share of immortality. Most stuff is just stuff, unless it has real meaning to someone you love, then stuff becomes life – it becomes a shrine to the one you love or loved.

The moral of the story is – buy wisely, shop considerately, and take what your mama gave you, then pass it on.