When my mother moved into a retirement residency, she stored several large boxes of family heirlooms in my sister's garage. My sister and I knew what was in them -- dishes, curios, a variety of silver spoons -- but we didn't know where these things came from. So one weekend, we went through the boxes with Mom, asking for the story behind each piece. I thought of that day when I watched the segment in the "Building Family History" show when Laura Prescott and her mother look at old photographs.

My mother was a good keeper of our family's stories, and she made sure that she knew the stories back several generations. She had two aunts who set a good example. When they moved into a nursing home, they labeled all their treasures with little stories before sending them off to various relatives.

One afternoon we unpacked a beautiful teapot. Imagining that it had graced the table of our grandmother, or greatgrandmother, we asked Mom where it came from. She studied it a while, then declared, "Oh, that's just something Dad picked up at a farm sale." We all laughed. Our family heirloom was someone else's discard!

I often think of that little teapot when I pass the flea markets in our neighborhood in New York. How many items there are family heirlooms, with great stories behind them, now lost to the generations? People are moving more these days than they did in my mother's time, and each move usually means a garage sale. Our consumer culture is built on the principle that you should get new things as often as possible, and there are only so many places to put them. It's no wonder that those old and worn family heirlooms often end up on the curb.

We can't keep everything that has had meaning for our families, but we can save some of them and make sure that they are treated with the respect due anything that holds family history.

Mary Ann Brussat
http://www.annonline.com/interviews/961206/biography.html