Family Heir Looms

This morning while doing my dusting I paused in front of two little plastic toys that had belonged to my father and thought about family heir looms.

I am the youngest of seven; my mother was the third of nine; and my father was the ninth of twelve; so there were a lot of children and grandchildren for spreading around family heir looms!  Thankfully my Mother's mother kept everything, and in her family my Mother was the one who ended up with most of her parents' treasures.  So I have a few things of theirs.  I have a quilt and an apron that her mother had made, and I have a copper tackle box that had belonged to her father and a little bunny bank where he had saved dimes.  (The opening in the bank was so small only dimes would fit.) 

There were fewer things from my father's family for passing down.  He had grown up pretty poor.  My grandfather died when when my father was only five years old.  His mother was a very strong lady who somehow managed to raise all those kids on her own, and his oldest brothers got jobs to help her out.  It was before and during the depression, so there wasn't much besides pictures that were saved from that time.  But he had this little plastic swan and a little plastic fish. 

My father was born in 1922, and I don't know where he got them, or when they were made, but they are very fragile, made from a very thin plastic.  They are intricately molded and painted.  I can remember seeing them when I was small and for some reason was fascinated by them.  When I was older I remember my mother putting them on display in a curio cabinet.  When my son was a baby he would be fascinated with them as well, especially the fish since he was quite a little fisherman.  Sometimes "Mamaw" or "Papaw" would take them out and let him see them and touch them, but never play with them.  My father always told him that when he was gone, he wanted my son to have them.  When my daughter was little she too was interested in them and was allowed occasionally to touch them. 

I cherish them because I think they are the only things my father had from when he was very young, from before his fatherdied.  Two weeks before my father died he reminded my husband that Andrew and Eler Beth were to have those two toys, and he reminded my mother too.  So a few weeks after his funeral my mother brought them to me, and now they have a place of honor in my own curio cabinet.  They are precious to me because they were his, -- because for some reason those two things were special to him, causing him to keep them safe for more than 70 years (he was 80 when he died), --  because my children treated them with awe and reverence, -- because it meant something to him that my children cherished them, --  but mostly I cherish them because he made a point of making sure, when he knew he was dying, that his promise to my children would be honored. 

Of course it would be.  He never had to worry about that.