My Grampy was a keen gardener. He had a large garden in which he grew fruit and vegetables that defied standards of size and production; I remember him entering the local flower show just once, and he came away with 26 first prizes. Having made his point he never entered again, never needed to.
The house was built by him as the family home for the rest of their lives, and he set the garden up accordingly - lorry loads of imported soil as a counter to the flinty and unpromising ground in the area, and annual dumps of well rotted manure (cow, not horse of course). Apparently turkey manure was also better than chicken, although I have no idea whether this is true. He seemed to be thinking along the lines of the principles of Biodynamics, whereupon the land is cultivated in sympathy with the flow of energy and resources, although where a builder with little education or training would have found out about this I don't know. Potatoes were always planted on Good Friday though; apparently this supported their growth and his resulting crop seemed to bear out the success of his thinking.
Grampy's tools were cherished to the point of being washed and brushed down after each use, like his bikes and even the car after a drive. The spade and fork were pressed into service virtually every day, and the years and years of sandy soil slowly wore the tines of the fork away until each one was half its starting length. The points were sharper than they should be, creating a lethal weapon that actually couldn't do its original job very well any more. When my grandparents died and the house was emptied, the fork came to me after my dad had put a new handle on and painted the metal black. This artefact of bucolic self-sufficiency now sits in my cellar: I'm rather scared to use it as the the points are so sharp, and it doesn't actually work very well due to the shortness of each spike - it is all out of balance now.
I was recently chatting to my Auntie Brenda; a gentle old lady and the last surviving member of her generation in our family. The subject of clearing out years of junk came up, and she offered the thought that the tea set in the display cabinet should go as she never has visitors, plus everyone drinks out of mugs nowadays. She has fond memories of when it was bought, but the reality is that it never sees the light of day. On the other hand, those memories still linger, and the set isn't doing any harm sitting there other than becoming an obstacle to dust around. And I could see all the objects that surround her, none moving until after she has gone; those memories holding her in a warm nest of comfort.
I just don't know what to do with these things and the many others; objects that have slowly drifted down through the generations and landed in my house - each item holds in its fabric an echo of the experiences and values of the past, not to mention the character of its previous owner. Do they remind me of the person? Well, yes to the spade, no to the tea set Isuppose. Are they intrinsically interesting in their own right as artefacts of a previous time, or are they just beautiful items? I'm not sure, and of course beauty is culturally relative anyway - I may love them now and hate them in the future, which would change what they offer as objects. Do they hold some value or narrative? Of course objects are composed of neutral material - it is just the shaping of them by a human that carries the message, not to mention the interpretation of the person holding them. This makes sense now. Grampy's fork has a form that I can then interpret and pull in other memories to add to the story - hard honest toil in the garden; the love of plants; the sheer strength and work capacity of the man. My imagination fills in the gaps, painting a picture of myriad flowers, copious potatoes and other vegetables. And, the values. Self-sufficiency, the value of physical labour.
So, what would happen if I threw these things away? Away would go physical representations of these values, and the values themselves would be consciously rejected. No wonder it is hard to get rid of things! It isn't just the object; it isn't just the memory of the person; it is also the discourse of which the object is the key to unlock.
Dare I throw away the fork, and in doing so throw away the key to unlock these values? Or, are the values sufficiently ingrained in me that the object is no longer needed? How about my keeping the fork in the cellar, deep in the heart of the house so that the values are sitting symbolically right where they need to be? Maybe one day I won't need it there as everything is in my head. Maybe one day those values will have shifted and evolved, and the fork no longer represents what I need in the world. Not just me of course, but everyone in the family. Will my children need those values?
In the meantime the tea set sits in the display cabinet awaiting its fate. Awaiting me as the arbiter of what is to be kept for future generations, or what is no longer needed. Tea sets - the ceremony of old formality, of showing your finest to other people, or of the care needed to prevent drips of tea landing on the easily spoiled polished wood furniture. And I take time to pick over my grandparents' possessions, my parents' possessions, my own too, looking for things to keep and things to get rid of. Stories to tell my children, or stories to give up to time and let new ones come in. Rules for behaving and being; writ large.
No comments:
Post a Comment