An Unforgotten Promise
You know those memes that people post about missing their mom โ those โgone too soonโ and โforever in my heartโ? When I read those I donโt think of my mother . . . I think of my grandmother. My grandmother raised us โ my 3 siblings and me โ and kept us together. She did what my mother could not.
She was asked to come help out after my oldest brother was born, and she stayed until my youngest sister moved out. Actually, when my sister left she took our grandma with her. As you may have surmised already, my family was not a close knit bunch of loveable people. My mother was a drunk โ thereโs no easy way to say that. She ran out on us more times than I can count โ sometimes for days, sometimes for months at a time. She was the worst kind of drunk โ the mean, cruel kind . . . the weepy kind that lashed out and cut others with her words. She wasnโt always a drunk โ that started when I was just a little girl barely able to tie my own shoes, and after my sister was born. It came on the heels of a nasty divorce, and my mother went down the rabbit hole, leaving 4 little kids to survive the best they could. And we did survive โ because my grandma answered the call for help, we survived.
It was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement. My mom had called her, crying, needing her mother, and my grandma answered that call in the way most mothers would. She put all her things in storage in her eldest daughterโs basement and traveled a thousand miles to help her youngest child in her time of deep despair and uncertainty. She never imagined her temporary stay would last over 25 years. And because she stayed, she lost all her belongings, as unbeknownst to my grandma, her eldest daughter had slowly sold off all her belongings and treasures. I remember the day we went to retrieve her things from my aunt - and finding nothing left of the life she left behind. I remember the look on my grandmaโs face when we left my auntโs house. Everything she had once possessed was gone, and that meant that my grandma was left with only the few items she had actually brought with her years before โ just a small cluster of items that all fit in a one small box that she could carry on the train, and her memories of her past life.
My grandma shared many of those memories with me over the years. She had a way of telling a story that grabbed your attention and held it there to the very end of the tale. As we grew up my siblings cared less and less about those stories โ we each were trying to survive our circumstances and stories didnโt seem all that important to my brothers and sister. They did to me, however, so while my siblings never had time to sit and listen to such tales of a bygone era, I made the time. I listened. It was this detail of my childhood that made me the unofficial keeper of the oral family history. Iโve most likely forgotten more than I remember now, and I had no idea at the time of who exactly I was supposed to pass these stories onto, but I listened nonetheless.
The world moved on and the stories faded โ not because they werenโt great stories, but because life never seems to grant just the right time to retrieve them and tell them to the next generation. This is one of those stories - one that never really had a chance to be retrieved until today . . . and thatโs because today I found my grandmaโs silverware.
Remember that small box that held my grandmaโs few belongings that she carried onto the train? In that box was the silverware her mother, Carolina, had given her when she married in 1922. Carolina had gotten the silverware from her mother. It was a full set of Roger Brotherโs 1847 silverware, the old colony pattern. Years earlier, my mother had moved away and had gotten married in a civil ceremony. She never had the chance to pass on her silverware to her own daughter. For my grandmother, this trip to be with her daughter was her chance to do just that - pass on her motherโs silverware, in the tradition started by her own mother. I never knew any of this about our daily silverware growing up. For my siblings and me it was just silverware โ it was kept in the silverware drawer and used daily.
Time marched on.
I had been on my own for many years when I got the call from my grandma that my mom had thrown out the silverware. From what I could make out, between the sobs and heavy sighs, was that a fight had erupted and to punish my grandmother for arguing, my mother took the silverware and threw it all in the trash can in front of her. She threatened her not to remove it โ it was trash . . . she was tired of having that old stuff โ and she would not allow my grandma to retrieve it. She warned her . . .
I was in my early twenties and lived about 20 miles away. My grandmother, still living with my mother in order to protect my still underage sister, was beside herself. My sister wasnโt home. My grandma was in her 80s, mostly blind and partially crippled, and was shaken and in tears. I had never known that woman to cry. She had always been a strong, fierce woman โ possessing a courage that only women who have fought their entire lives have. That woman never cried โ not that any of us ever saw, anyway. She never showed weakness. She had stood up to danger more times in her life than could be counted โ including the danger her own daughter displayed that day. She was the fiercest woman I had ever known. Now I heard her voice on the phone โ I heard the despair and the pain. She was too old and frail now to stand up to her daughter as she had in the past . . . and my mother knew it. I raced over to the house, not knowing what fresh hell I would be walking into, but prepared to do whatever I needed to . . . calling on a courage that is only seen in women who have fought their entire lives โ a courage my grandma would truly recognize.
When I arrived, my mother was in her bedroom and her door was closed. My grandmother was in her own bedroom, sitting hunched over on the side of her bed, her huge hands trembling. My heart broke seeing her that way. This was not something I had ever witnessed โ my grandma had been crying. I went immediately to the kitchen, and as quietly as I could, dumped the trash on the floor. As I lifted the waste basket I could see a silver handle here and a rounded spoon end there, and got busy pulling them free from the real trash. I hurried. As I found each piece I tossed it into a paper grocery bag. I did this quickly. I did this quietly. I then cleaned up my mess, put the waste can back where it was, and then smuggled the stolen treasure down the hall, past my motherโs room, and into the sanctuary of my grandmaโs room. Make no mistake โ I did smuggle it โ I actually held my breath as I tiptoed past my motherโs bedroom, lest she hear me and all hell break loose.
I sat on the bed and opened the bag to show her โ the silverware lay in a jumbled pile in the bottom. She couldnโt see them very well but she heard the jangle of metal on metal and I could see her shoulders relax. She wouldnโt take the bag from me. Instead she had me open one of her drawers and retrieve a few itemsโฆ. A blue decorative bottle, a few ceramic figurines, and a small pile of papers tied with a ribbonโฆ her beloved possessions of a past life โ the scraps of history โ family history โ that once fit in a box that was carried onto a train.
I sat with her only a short while afterward, keeping an ear toward the door listening for sounds of movements from down the hall. I listened intently as she told me a short tale about each item and then hurriedly sent me on my way. She too, feared the beast would awake before I could make my escape. But I did escape . . . and my mother never knew I had rescued the silverware.
As I drove home that day I ran each tale through my mind, wanting so desperately to remember every word โ and course I didnโtโฆ I remember the big things and overall tales, but not the wonderful details she had given me - those were clouded by the stress of the day. And I thought about what she had asked of me as I sat on that old worn out mattress, she made me promise to pass that silverware down to my first-born child. I didnโt have any children . . . yet. I promised her I would.
So, thatโs the backstory. My grandma passed away in 1983. My first born โ a beautiful son โ was born just 2 months before she died. She was almost completely blind by then, only able to distinguish light from dark. And yet, when I placed my newborn son in her arms she looked down at his face and exclaimed he was the most beautiful child she had ever seen. She died a short time later and I scattered her ashes on her husbandโs grave โ it was my 24th birthday.
Life moved on as life always does, and the silverware was put away โ it had come to be a treasure and not just eating utensils, and regardless of the number of moves or the events of my life, I always knew that one day I would pass that silverware onto my first-born child. Unfortunately, when we moved the last time in 2006, I had packed quickly and not as organized as I usually would. We were on a deadline to get back to Virginia from Arizona and packing was chaotic. For decades I had always known where the silverware was โ but after we moved back to Virginia, I couldnโt find it and feared the worst โ had I somehow lost it?
It was now September of 2020 and I had looked for that silverware for 14 years and 2 months. On this day in 2020, I found it. Years of looking and looking and digging through all the storage boxes to no avail had taken its toll on me. I had 14 years of wondering, โWhere did it go?โ My oldest son has a home of his own now - and it was time to pass it on, so where the hell was it? Years of digging and depression at not finding it โ years of wondering if I would be able to keep that promise I made to my grandma almost 40 years ago . . . The disappearance of the silverware has haunted me.
Then one day, in September of 202, I felt the need to dig again โ and headed down to the shop on our property that we used for storage. A building filled from floor to ceiling of past adventures and memories and trash โ a hodgepodge of crap needing sorting and eliminating. I had a need to look . . . My husband, Tom, decided to go with me to help. We started in a back room and looked through numerous boxes, then went to another room and searched some more. We were in the front room, carefully squeezing through mountains of boxes, shifting them around, opening them up one by one, and not finding the much sought after treasure. I glanced downward and noticed a box at Tomโs feet โ a plastic box. I only put important things in plastic boxes . . . Tom was standing in a corner surrounded by boxes on three sides. I asked him if he could get to the plastic one on the floor by his feet. He moved the large boxes off of it and open the cover. There amongst old papers was a blue-felt box. OMG! Could it be? Tom lifted the out the blue felt box smiling. I recognized it immediately โ I knew he held that treasure I had been in search of and I snatched it immediately from him and pulled it into my chest, hugging it as the tears started streaming down my face. I cried for my grandma. I cried for my promise. I cried tears of sadness and gratefulness, and joy, and pain. I could barely catch my breath. It hit me hard and without warning โ 14 years of worry, of remorse and guilt for having lost such a precious item โ it all came pouring forth. I looked up โ Tom was still smiling, his hand raised for a high-five that I had left hanging there . . . he waited patiently for me to return that high-five. I finally did.
My grandmaโs silverware. Passed on from generation to generation. I would not be the one to break that chain after all. There was an overwhelming peace that came with that realization. Of course, it was not a full set โ some pieces were lost growing up to simple things like making mud pies as a child, and some pieces were missing because one of my brothers pawned a few for money to buy drugs, but I had every piece that had been thrown in the trash that awful day so very long ago.
I donโt have much to pass on to my children that has any meaningful family history โ just a few small items and some old silverware. Items that once fit in a small box, carried on a train by a woman who once answered the call for help. A woman whose courage I admired greatly. A woman who gave up her entire life in order that my siblings and I might survive the chaotic and cruel world of our childhood. A woman who lived long enough to know that her one remaining possession in this world that held any value to her would be passed on to another generation, 37 years later, through her oldest grand-daughter, and that I would tell the story to my oldest son.
My grandma had a way of telling a story that grabbed your attention and held it there to the very end of the tale. I hope I have made her proud in the telling of my own story โ albeit, a continuation of hers โ but one that also began with a call for help.
My grandma. She truly is โforever in my heartโ.
Liz Becker
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