Personal Effects

My Muv’s stuff arrived from Spain the other day. It was delivered late in the afternoon but a man that was none to gentle with the boxes. After I’d signed and closed the door, I stood next to the two boxes for about twenty minutes, just looking at them. I knew I was supposed to open them, but I just couldn’t bring myself to.

Eventually I did open them.

There was a jacket. Not the jacket I had asked for. I had never seen this jacket before, so now I have a strange funky smelling blue and red jacket hanging in the spare room door. The blue and black tartan jacket I requested has either been given to someone or thrown out. Don’t even get me started!

There was a pair of yellow quilts that I made in 2001. They smelled of stale smoke. The two matching cushion covers were nowhere to be seen.

There was a lamp base that was always around when I was a child. It currently has no wire, so it can’t be used and it’s missing a lampshade. A classic crème silk shade will restore it to the lamp I remember from day of old.

A 1923 copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. It had been packed in such a way that the back cover had been pushed up. This meant that as soon as I took it from the box, the back cover detached itself from the rest of the book. I took a deep breath and placed it to the side with a mental note to try and find someone who could fix it later. I couldn’t resist having a little trip down memory lane when I flicked it open the butchering of a mutton and thinking about Dad bring home a dead deer, and Muv using her Mrs. Beeton’s as a guide before placing the pieces in the freezer.

One of the boxes was filled with small ornamental shoes.

And finally her jewellery box. Filled with various pieces. Some I recall from my childhood, like the silver locket containing a lock of her hair and on the opposite side a picture and twist of my dad’s hair. Thinking about that item, I remember wearing it on a long silver chain to my first job interview. Also hidden in there was the small plastic hospital band that I would have worn in my first days on this earth.