Thursday, November 20, 2008

Collectables

My mother-in-law caught my roving eyes as I surveyed each wall of the dining room. “I know what you’re thinking”, she looked at me with a rather evil grin on her face.

“What?” I asked, already feeling guilty. But she knew that I knew that she did know what I was thinking.

“You are wondering what you are going to do with all of this when I die.”

Bingo. That was absolutely right. I nervously giggled as I looked around the room. On the walls were wooden window boxes of all sizes holding collections of thimbles, miniature spoons, decorated shot glasses, several tiny tea sets, and more. There were two glass china cabinets filled to maximum capacity with complete sets of different flat wear patterns.

And then there are the dolls, oh my god, they are everywhere ~ little ones, medium sizes and large dolls holding more little ones. There were white faces and pink faces and pudgy cheeked brown Indian faces. There were on every shelf, every bed, literally on every flat surface of the house, their eyes followed you everywhere. It was more than a little creepy, even as my husband told me that many were collector items and very valuable. They were piled three deep in front of the useless fireplace. There were dolls in boxes on the closet shelf of our bedroom and when I shoved my shoes under the bed at night they would not go far. Boxed dolls would be my guess.

We made the drive down to southwest New Mexico at least once a year and I put on a good face for the time that I had to spend in all that clutter. But as life unfolded, I was not the one that had to deal with the mess. Bob and I separated several years before his mother passed over. The down side was I never saw the beautiful handmade turquoise jewelry pieces that she had collected and said she wanted me to have, because I was such “a doll”.

* annette

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