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My Personal 'Antiques Roadshow'

Passover china and other family items are too precious to live without

By Karen Galatz

A few years back, we moved into a new house in a new state to begin a new phase of our lives. Yet for all that newness, our house was instantly overstuffed with memories.

Antiques Roadshow
China purchased from Hungary 1929  |  Credit: Courtesy of Karen Galatz

The house is not a historic landmark. Frank Lloyd Wright did not draw up the design plans. George Washington definitely did not sleep here nor did a meth lab operator set up shop onsite.

It is just a lovely house, and the memories that fill it are all ours. More accurately, they are mine. They were delivered cross-country via a 79-foot moving truck. According to the packing inventory, there were a whopping 180 pieces of furniture and 220 boxes.

On with the Antiques Roadshow

Several bulky, sentimental pieces had belonged to my grandma, part of a shopping spree on her one trip home to visit her family in Hungary in 1929, two decades after immigrating alone to the United States. It was the last time she saw her family. The Nazis saw to that.

Chair purchase from Hungary 1929
Chair purchase from Hungary 1929  |  Credit: Courtesy of Karen Galatz

When Grandma came to America as a 12-year-old, she was poor. But in 1929, even in the Great Depression, she was a fancy American lady. Stored in the hull of the ship sailing back to the U.S. were an elaborately carved walnut couch and matching chair; an equally ornate coffee table; a massive china closet, a narrow parquet side table that magically opened to seat 14 people and cartons of delicate fine china and hand-embroidered linens.

My grandmother cherished these items and devoted much care to their upkeep. She polished the furniture lovingly and used the dishes only on the most special occasions, like Passover. A dry cleaner lost one of the tablecloths, and my 5’10” grandmother decked him!

For a time after Grandma died, the pieces were scattered among various relatives, but eventually they all wound up in my home.

“You’re the sentimental one,” said each relative as they happily shed the clunky, old-fashioned items. For me, each item is laden with deep emotional history that outweighs any simple cost-per-item calculation or desire to redecorate.

Knit One, Knit Some More

Thanks to my mother and grandmother, I have closets, cabinets, couches and walls overflowing and over-decorated with embroidered, knitted and needlepointed pictures, pillows and afghans. Adding to the inventory: 21 handmade banquet-size tablecloths and matching napkin sets, lace doilies, guest hand towels and a brush and comb holder.

And there are, of course, the art, music, movies, photos, the drawings, the knickknacks my husband, my children and I have enthusiastically and over-abundantly added to the mix.

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Grateful, But…

I should be grateful. It is, after all, amazing that people who fled Russia, Rumania and Hungary with nothing did so well in America. It is equally amazing that just two generations later, I am blessed with this problem of overabundance.

I should relish the wonderful memories associated with each heirloom. Instead, I recall standing over finger-scalding hot water at the kitchen sink, hand-washing delicate dishes and polishing silver. And I grimace thinking about cleaning the crevices of all that intricate furniture with Q-tips and toothpicks.

Instead of joy, I feel haunted and sad. I think of lifestyles and lives too long gone. I recall misunderstandings, ill-timed words, fights, illnesses and deaths.

As I write this, I sit at my mother’s desk, in my mother’s chair. I smile, remembering how meticulously she worked, using a typewriter and adding machine, writing checks and preparing billing statements for my father’s electrical business.

To my left is Grandma’s couch; to the right, her chair. This old-fashioned furniture doesn’t fit the style of our new sleek, ultra-modern house. Yet, these items had to be put somewhere. So, here they — and I — sit in the back of the house in a space used only by me, rarely visited, except by the memories.

The Museum of Me

Every direction I look, I see the past. I am lovingly surrounded and simultaneously oppressed by this familial clutter. Yet, I cannot imagine shedding a single item. These objects tell the story of my family. They tell the story of me. Yes, this is the Museum of Me.

(This story originally appeared in J. The Jewish News of California.)

Karen Galatz is the author of Muddling through Middle Age, a weekly humor blog, and The Matzo Chronicles. An award-winning journalist, Karen loves to make women and men "of a certain age" laugh, think and feel. A native New Yorker and former Las Vegan, Karen now calls Berkeley, Calif. home. Read More
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