Something Old, Something New, Sometimes Hick Has Not a Clue

All of this finding and touching and sorting and dividing and dispersing of Mom's household goods is driving me crazy.

It's not like she had a treasure chest of gold doubloons tucked away in a closet under the stairs. She wasn't one for fancy jewelry, or collectible art, or fine antiques. My sister the ex-mayor's wife and I both knew the riches were in the stocks and the CDs, not in the giant industrial-size safe parked against the front wall of the family room, where Mom stored envelope upon envelope of clippings of her grandchildren's school successes, and their own original artwork. Oh, and a needle for a stereo that has long since been sent to live on that farm where plastic 1960s stereos go after wearing out their welcome in the basement for two decades, and wearing a fine coat of mold.

Sis utilizes the tactile, long-goodbye style of clean-out, and I have enough laziness for the both of us. A fine-toothed rat-tail comb through the hair of a woolly mammoth looks like a rake combing frog hair compared to our efforts. We don't want to accidentally toss out family mementos. Heirlooms, perhaps, in our haste. No baby is being thrown out with OUR bath!

We have half the kitchen cabinets, and the dining room left. Hick harps every day that we should be careful when going through the china cabinet. "Your grandma told me that when she died, there was a platter in her stuff for your mom. A really old platter, kind of off-white, with what looks like cracks all through it, because it's so old. But they're not cracks in the platter. So DON'T THROW IT OUT! It has a sticky note on it that says it's to your mom from your grandma."

Let the record show that this grandma was my dad's mom. She and Mom didn't get together much, just holidays if Sis and I asked to include her. They weren't enemies or anything. But my mom wasn't much for socializing with the in-laws. More slaw for her, I guess.

Let the record further show that Hick used to visit my grandma at her house every Sunday evening. He did that for ten or fifteen years. The boys and I used to go along, until they got older and had other endeavors eating up their time. Hick would chat for a couple of hours, fix anything broken, take leftovers from our supper, and generally act like the adult child grandma didn't have around, what with my dad and uncle and infant aunt deceased, and the remaining son several states away.

So...here we are, back at that heirloom platter. I warned Sis every day we met. "Don't forget, there's a platter in the china cabinet that is old, with a note on it from Grandma. We have to make sure one of us takes it. It's not for the auction or to throw away." Sis would agree. She spoke for a platter she wanted, a plastic one with a turkey on it, for sentimental reasons. We're not really dish people.

Hick has a bit of the snoop in him. When he would go mow Mom's yard, and enter the house for the bathroom, or for water, he would take a look around. "I looked in the china cabinet, and I didn't see that platter. Did you guys already get it?"

"No. We have not gone through the dining room yet. We'll get to it."

"Make sure you don't throw away that platter! It should have a note. It will look old and cracked. But it's special. Don't throw it out!"

Criminy! You'd think Grandma grabbed him around the neck and spoke those platter words to him with her dying breath, so keen was Hick on relaying that information.

I think Mom might be getting the last laugh. Okay. Probably not the LAST laugh. But putting one over on us again. Tuesday, as we boxed up items from the living room, and a couple of cake plates positioned on the floor against the wall behind the curtains, Sis found a dish we had not noticed.

"Look at this? What is it? Have you ever seen this before? Mom didn't use it. Look. It was right here in the corner, on the floor beside the sideboard. What is this?"

"I don't know. A soup tureen? A bowl for gravy? It has a lid. But no ladle. I don't know what you'd call that."

"Oh, look! There's a note in it. A sticky note. But it's dried out. Just laying here. 'For Dot. From Helen.'"

"Do you think...?"

"I don't know. It's not a platter. It's not white. Or yellow. It's more pink. And it has that pattern. But what would you use it for? It kind of looks cracked. Do you think...?"

"Maybe. There's that note."

"But Mom could have just put that in there. You know how she was."

"I know. It might be something new and cheap, and she put that note in because it fell off the special platter."

"Huh. I'll set it here on the dining room table until we get to this room."

I guess we won't know for sure until we go through everything in the dining room. Either Mom is having a good laugh, or Hick was sadly misinformed.

Let the final record show that Hick IS the man who, in 2006, described Katharine Hepburn, deceased in 2003, as "Betty, the famous author who just died."