Mr. Memento……

Mr. Memento……

Yup, it’s time for another 2013 FOLK Journal Challenge prompt.  Here’s the question to ponder:

What family memento do you cherish? Why?

This week’s prompt was pretty hard to nail down because, well, our house is FULL of family mementos that I cherish….really full….(when we are gone, the kids and their spouses are going to have a HUGE estate sale, okay?)  See Linda and I would rather have something that means something to us even if it isn’t perfect. Linda is better at editing some of those things than I am, but still between the two of us we have a lot of old stuff…

Anyway I am rambling here….Back to the topic. I ended up picking two things to mention in this post. One from each side of my family. The first one is the one I thought of first, only because I have very few mementos from my Dad’s side of my family.  This ring is from a tin that was in Mom and Dad’s drawer when I was little and it included a bunch of 1920 silver dollars and other jewelry bits that I assume were from his side of the family too. This ring was from one of my Dad’s aunt’s beau’s.  I think the beau left her, but she kept the ring and somehow my Dad got it.  To be honest, Dad’s stories are not always clear to me, and I am not positive that his remembrance is always that accurate.  I don’t even remember how I came into possession of the ring either. I do remember that I gave it to my wife as a promise ring the December before we were engaged. She wore it as a pendant until that May.  The box is not original to the ring. I think the box came from my Grandma Roggendorf  because of the Milwaukee address, but I could have picked it up in a thrift shop years ago.  I know that I have had the two together for over 25 years now. Why do I cherish this? I think because my heart always felt bad for the aunt who the beau jilted, and I thought that maybe I could do a little better? I wear the ring sometimes now as a pinkie ring just because I like it.  I also cherish it because it comes from the past and to me represents some of the craftsmanship of the past.  Living on the West Coast, nothing really seems to be very “old” compared to the rest of the world.

As I was looking around the many, many mementos, I spotted this wooden clock bank  from my Mother’s youth. I don’t remember using it as a bank as I don’t think it ever had it’s “top”.  But I do remember carting it all over my travels when I grew up and moved away. I always have cherished this because I felt a connection to my Mom.  Her Mom was the “fun” Grandma, and though I could never really imagine Mom as a little girl, I heard many stories about growing up in Wisconsin, and it seemed like such a different world then.  She remembers being a teen and going over to the neighbors to watch TV!! This little clock reminds me of time in a much different way than it was originally intended to do.

So what about you? do you have some mementos that you cherish? Would love to hear about them!