A seven-inch Sheffield shaving blade with a black horn handle, smooth and brittle but the blade kept its edge. My great-great-grandfather’s shaving blade. And his gold pocket watch, and cigar knife, and his spectacles. And his .45 muzzle-loading Deringer boot pistol.

I saw much of my Mother’s family’s history during the two days we stayed with my parents. Old photographs, silk hankies, tie tacks. Coin and stamp collections.

Mom finally has most of my Grandma’s apartment cleaned out. She sighed and said we come from people who keep everything, especially the hand-made handkerchiefs, aprons, tablecloths, pillowcases and sheets. Everything. Packed as tightly as possible, dense to the point of implosion, like a black hole. Where will I put it all, she asked me. And what should I save? What should I sell? What should I give away?

I carted home a trunkload of vintage clothing, clothes my Grandma had worn out on the town when she and my Grandfather were young and in Chicago in the 1940s, 50s, 60s. I don’t know much about vintage clothing but I know all of it was expensive to begin with, and it has been cared-for and preserved inside her wardrobe. Grandma liked red.
She also liked to sew, and some of the jackets and even some of the dresses look like she probably tailored them. I have seen photos of her in some of the clothes, years before I was born, visiting her daughter away at college, holding hands looking at a windmill in a tulip field and standing beside Lake Michigan.

Sometimes when I catch a glimpse of my reflection I can see just a bit of her, around the eyes, kind smile lines, and I have her long strong fingers.

This was our first Thanksgiving without Grandma. My mother cried. Me, I’m just thankful she’s no longer in pain.