I am the keeper of the bins — all 10 of them. Rather than a burden adding to the closet’s clutter, today I see them as a gift.
I began lifting the dusty lids and rifling through each one in search of something I remembered seeing when last I ventured into my family history for a story. I know there are old Valentine cards, or love notes in one of the many scrapbooks, or in the countless envelopes and boxes within boxes. I just can’t find them. Every time I go through the bins I find something I haven’t seen before, and miss the things that I wanted to see again. Someday I will catalogue everything.
In looking for symbolic Victorian expressions of Valentine’s Day love - a cleverly worded card, or a quaintly cheesy ‘roses are red’ poem I had come across before - I found instead in the whole of this collection, expressions of love in all its forms spanning several generations.
My father’s branch of the family tree contains the serious memorabilia buffs. They wrote notes on certain items for those who would come after them, identifying people in photos, requesting a certain item be kept for posterity. It has been seen as a bit self-absorbed in our modern family lore. What I have isn’t even all of what was saved. My father sorted through piles of history in my grandparent’s basement and only kept what he felt was most relevant to the family going forward.
My great-grandmother, L. Ethel Heine, died when I was very young. I knew her only as an imposing older woman in a very large ornately framed oil painting that hung first in my grandmother’s house, then in my parents’ home. The portrait was intimidating. She appeared to hold court and pass judgment on us all, although gone for decades.
In their middle years, she and her lawyer-husband, M. Casewell Heine, wrote serious articles about serious things in serious times. They also wrote poems and stories - some purposefully silly, some relevant again in today’s political climate. There is an unpublished novel my great-great-grandmother wrote along with stories by the next two generations of women. Casewell wrote historical vignettes for fun on topics such as President Abraham Lincoln’s early life and events leading up to the world wars.
But in the early 1900s, Ethel and Casewell were young and in love. Sifting through the bins allowed me glimpses of their courtship through flirty photos of rowing on a lake, frolicking on a beach in their Victorian swimming garb, and their chaperoned travel adventures. She was a lovely woman, and he was dashing. Their journals and photos, although black and white, bring the pair back to living color.
They married in 1907. A little white book, still with its brittle paper jacket, details in print the wedding ceremony of the time. Handwritten notes in the back detail their own ceremony, including the vows they wrote themselves: my great-grandmother did not promise to obey.
In my search, I see their lives unfold, see the lines of worry and age appear on their faces. Something happened, maybe it was the times or personal tragedies, but they became more serious in pictures, more serious in their writing. The carefree days of their youth slipped away. But still they loved each other. It’s plain from the writing in a scrapbook they began on their honeymoon in Washington, D.C. that also contains entries in celebration of their 25th and 50th wedding anniversaries. It’s plain that they loved their daughter, my grandmother, too.
I read Ethel’s thoughts and feelings in a journal she started when Laura, her only child, was born; I saw photos of Laura as a baby, a child, a teen, as an adult and on into the days I remember myself. I read reports of Laura’s conversations at age 3, how she reacted to thunderstorms and how she threw herself on the couch and burst into tears when she was accepted to college.
Several generations and branches of the family have remembrances in these bins. Stories I have yet to explore.
A small metal box dinged and losing its paint contains a mother’s heartache: a lock of blonde hair, a casket key tied with a blue ribbon, a white satin baby’s bonnet and well-worn condolence letters.
Children were so loved; some died too young and created a hole in their families when they passed as babies, children, teens and young adults in their prime. Other objects in the collection include medals, a silver spoon, a pair of wedding shoes, an intricate hairnet and a photo of the woman who wore it, my great-grandmother’s leather wallet, and copper plates for printing photographs and signatures.
My ancestors also loved places. They found peace as I do in farms, mountains and riverside cabins. They loved road trips and took to rough roads in the early days of the automobile, keeping ephemera from restaurants, gas stations, hotels, train rides, shows and more, to carefully paste into scrapbooks along with photos and notes of their adventures.
A strong faith also runs through the generations. A thick leather binder contains handwritten sermons from my minister-ancestor who lived in the early 1800s, and who ended his own life in the sea on his way to start a new ministry. Paper was at a premium, and mingled in with his sermons are family tales of children, illness, death, fear, hope and gratitude.
Their stories are in pen and ink cursive; I imagine them writing by oil lamp, the hand becoming less clear as they tired.
Some of the journals and letters I read may have been written on the same roll-top walnut desk from 1876 that is now my writing desk. Their babies may have been rocked in the same rush-seated rocker that now sits in my bedroom.
The echoes of the love, loss, learning, faith and wonder in those bins are a priceless gift sent to me through the ages. When I find myself lost, wondering what to write, I open a bin and let loose the ghosts of the past to see how I can tell their stories and apply them to another chapter of my own.
Published: ShoreLine Times Feb 12, 2017