Sewing Box Lost Forever

~ Posting nine days late ~
In conjuction with my grandmother's 134th birthday.

BELONGING TO ROVILLA
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

My grandmother's tooled leather wallet.

Mary Rovilla Heidemann Lindsey
(October 8, 1891 - June 14, 1966)

It has been almost five years ago since my siblings, cousins, and I sorted out the storage unit filled with our grandparents' belongings. Grandma died back in 1966 (when I was 9), and Grandpa in 1983 (when I was 26). Mom lived until 2020, so she had 35 years or so to look through all these things, but she declined the responsibility, leaving it all for us kids to deal with. Dressers, tables, clothes, dishes, linens, ancient medicines, sheet music, books, pictures, letters from World War I, memorabilia of all kinds: a hefty chore, but also a blessing of sorts. As my brothers pointed out, maybe it was worth it, just to spend that time with our cousins reliving all the childhood memories that came flooding back, right down to the scent of pine tar soap that wafted from the old locked medicine chest. That was Grandpa and Grandma's house, alright. We inhaled deeply, savored the moment, then tossed out the fifty - year old health and beauty aids.

That's how it went. We had to decide that day what to save and what to throw away. No more procrastinating, as our elders had done. We applied ourselves to the task and wore ourselves out emotionally, making the decisions -- some easy, some hard. Satisfied with the results of our familial effort, we each went away with a small heap of dusty treasures -- and the rest went to the dump. We had to use our own best judgment and trust that we had not inadvertently trashed any valuables. Even I, the most sentimental archivist and border-line hoarder of the family, felt satisfied with the culling and de-possessing (i.e, The Swedish Death Cleanse).

However, just as I was dropping off to sleep that night, a sudden stray thought disturbed my peace of mind: Grandma's Sewing Box. Halfway through the day, one of my brothers had held it up, "Look what I found!" I had not laid eyes upon it nor even thought of it for decades, but there it was, exactly as we remembered, about 12" x 16" and 6" deep, covered in a faded lime green fabric with small orange hexagons and maybe a line-drawn snowflake design inside of each hex. Kind of a cross between calico and Art Deco and Pennsylvania Dutch. A definite keeper for the "save" pile. What a treat it would be to open it later that evening -- like a time capsule -- to see what had been hidden away inside all these years: my grandmother's scissors and thimbles, her last bit of embroidery or mending, her older brother's pencil drawings, her own fashion designs on scraps of paper, maybe a card or tiny present that I myself had given her.

But where was it? I knew for certain that it was not in my "save" pile or anyone else's. What had happened? Someone else called my name to "come and see"? Another task caught my attention? Another choice to make? Whatever it was, I had missed out the crucial step of setting that treasure box aside, and now it was gone from me forever. I cried myself to sleep that night, and many nights after, before gradually accepting the finality of the loss.

After that, I started playing this little game in my head whenever I need to part with some bygone artifact; I look at whatever it is I can’t decide about and say to myself, “If you can live without Grandma Lindsey’s sewing box, you can live without this.” Sometimes it’s easy — like a pile of plastic hangers. Other times, more of a struggle. Whenever I start to grieve some valuable (to me) object that I have lost in one way or another, I simply compare it to the sad mistake of losing the sewing box. For example, of all the things I've thrown away with no regret, I kind of wish I'd kept my Weekly Reader collection, along with my junior high art portfolio; but I can live without them, right?

As usual, literature can help. A couple of years later, while reading of a lost pearl earring, my heart broke a little more, but also healed a little. On a forced train ride to a Japanese internment camp, on top of all her other losses, the mother loses a favorite earring, and her little son asks:

"What did it look like?"

"It looked like a pearl," she said.
"It was a pearl."

"Maybe it rolled behind the seat."

"Or maybe," she said, "it's just gone.
Sometimes things disappear and
there’s no getting them back.
That's just how it is.” (p 86)

~ Julie Otsuka ~ ~
When the Emperor Was Divine~
In my case, the sewing box -- like the pearl earring -- was just gone, and there was no getting it back. That's just how it was. Yet all was not lost. Fate may have deprived me of one keepsake, but it gave me a couple of others instead, both handmade by Rovilla.

1. My cousin Larry Foster, wrote with some exciting and heartfelt news: "I was going through some of my Grandmother Elizabeth Miller Taylor's things and found a doily that your Grandmother Rovilla made for her in 1965. It was stored in a glass jar along with a note explaining its history. We think you or another direct descendant of Rovilla should have it."

Elizabeth and Rovilla were beloved first cousins, known for exchanging gifts, letters, and visits over the years. Elizabeth's daughter Josie (Larry's mother) and Rovilla's daughter Mary (my mother) were favorite second cousins. And thanks to the carefully kept records of our ancestors and the miracle of facebook, I have been able in recent years to meet up with Josie's children Larry, and his siblings Cindy and Jeff. How kind of my third cousins to pass this family treasure back to me! Here is Elizabeth's note:

Gerry had the idea to keep the doily on the countertop
underneath our electric kettle, since that was Rovilla’s
original idea when she gave it to Elizabeth.

2. Back on that fateful day at the storage facility, one item that made it safely to the "save" pile was this quilt, wrapped in a brown paper bag, finished to perfection but apparently never used, now hanging on the wall in my guest room:

Did my mother even know that this quilt existed among her mother's things? I don't think so. I feel she would have told me about it if she had known. If she had looked inside the bag, I think she would have taken the quilt out and maybe kept it folded at the foot of her bed. My guess is that when Mom cleared out Grandma's closet, she stored the quilt without any investigation. This note, in Rovilla's writing was attached:

If only it was dated. Rovilla was very good about documenting heirlooms and writing dates on photographs, but not this time. It could have been no later than the mid - 1960's, but who knows how much earlier? I love the note because it features Rovilla's lovely cursive style; but, as you can see, the straight pen was rusty and, fearing damage to the fabric, I removed the note, photographed it, and stored it carefully -- can you guess where? Neither can I! As a coda to today's theme of loss, the note itself has become one of those troublesome items, stored so safely that I have outsmarted myself and forgotten where I put it. Will it come into my life again? Will I find it in a family scrapbook or photo album? Or is it just gone for good -- like the sewing box and the pearl -- as poet Elizabeth Bishop says, "filled with the intent to be lost":

One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)
Poet Laureate of the United States, 1949 to 1950
Pulitzer Prize Winner, 1956
See previous post: Lost & Found

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