I have been hauling and storing boxes, bags, and trunks of other people's things for the last four years. The collection started long before, actually, but in the last few years there have been so many important family changes that the stuff in my life has exploded out of any reasonable proportion. I have made several attempts to manage this unwieldy and oppressive baggage. Sometimes I actually do take old clothes, old dishes, old toasters to the folks at the Good Will because they will take almost anything. 
It's harder to part with what passes for memorabilia, of course. When sorting through a box of linens from prior generations of family, for instance, I found some flour sacks that used to be the only way to dry the dishes. They were used on every family occasion. I can't remember why drying seemed to fall to the younger women, but I suppose it was because they weren't trusted to actually get the dishes clean. What I do remember is many conversations over the kitchen sink, towels getting wetter and wetter, until the last dish got a very damp, semi-dry, wipe.
Not all of these conversations were particularly informative or even light-hearted, at least not in my family. But sometimes there would be instructions about how to handle a particular favorite dish: "That was your Aunt Jenny's, don't drop it! She brought it all the way from Norway!" Which gave not only an on-going history of who brought what from where, but what was valued as well. Family history was important even if the present generations were squabbling, fussing, fuming, and not speaking to one another. In fact, the parties who were not speaking were often brought out of a practiced and careful silence to argue about the remembrance of which dish came from what side of the family.
So these dish towels seemed to me to be full of family history, collected through many years of use, abuse, and familiarity. Some of them had been hastily embroidered to serve as a present from one generation to the next, and some had been labored over and even hemmed by hand. I loved most the ones with sunbonnet girls who were busily engaged ironing, baking, or watering the lazy daisy flowers. So I set the towels aside.
The sunbonnet girls, however, did not set me aside. I kept thinking about them, and about how simple their lives seemed to be. They were happily engaged in the most menial housework, and always dressed with matching bonnets and petticoats as if they were going to a party, and not hanging out the laundry. In their world the sky was always blue, and the only thing to be done was the task at hand.
As I continued to sort through boxes, I came upon some old iron-on transfers of those very sunbonnet girls. "See," they said. "We haven't left you!"
So I have embarked upon the very rewarding recreational experience of embellishing and refurbishing those old dish towels. I have realised that by making something useful beautiful, I am honoring not only a family tradition, but, as my daughter reminds me, doing something helpful for our ecology. Hopefully I am only passing on the useful and beautiful to my growing family. But I do remember that useful is not always without family drama, nor is beautiful always without effort. Everyday menial tasks can be hard and often the work seems unrewarded. But the family that is supported by these tasks is always a beautiful thing, and always a treasure.
