Polishing Memories

I began this morning wondering what in the world I can do to pass a little time. I bought silver polish yesterday at the grocery store, so I thought I would go ahead and polish the few silver treasures that we have around the house. I started polishing my Grandma's old silver jewelry box. It is small with a large "A" on the top. Of course, it has many of the rings she wore hidden inside. Juliana peeks and asks if the rings for dress-up. I told her they were Great-Grandma's rings and she had to compliment all of them, even the ones that most would say, "hmmm, that's interesting".

After polishing Grandma's jewelry box, I began polishing a silver bowl and spoon that was given to Juliana for her Baptism in October 2002 from my Granny, Juliana's GG. The silver bowl and spoon actually belonged to my Uncle Pat who passed away June 2, 2002. As I was polishing the bowl, I was in deep thought. I found it a little ironic that I was polishing my Uncle Pat's silver spoon, while remembering what a tough journey he had while on this earth. I made a point of polishing his initials on the front, "EPM" (Edward Patrick McNair, actually changed to Patrick Standish McNair) to make them stand out.

During my deep thought, Juliana asks me once again what I was polishing. I told her a little bit about the bowl and spoon, and who it belonged to. She got a confused look on her face. Without getting exact quotes, she said to me, "Mommy, Great-Uncle Pat lives in Heaven, how can he use a bowl?" Then she thought for another second and said, "No Mommy, Great-Uncle Pat lives in the dirt, remember I talked to him and cleaned his rock (tombstone) while we were in California? What would he do with a silver bowl and silver spoon?" I honestly can not remember what I told her, I just remember thinking that I wish Uncle Pat could her Juliana's curiosity and genuine interest in wanting to know more about his life and more about this simple silver bowl and silver spoon.

Who would have thought that a simple task of polishing a few pieces of silver would bring out so many memories. I often wonder how interested Kevin will be with family history and memories from the past. Perhaps I can polish a few more memories for him in the next few years.

The picture above is Juliana cleaning off Uncle Pat's tombstone while we were visiting the Standish family plot in Los Altos Hills, CA in March.
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The weather here has been all over the place. It's been warm, sunny, dark, rainy, windy, calm, snow, thunder....

During Juliana's spring break, we went to the Easter Egg hunt at the Henry Ford Museum with friends, and went to the park a few times too. When we went to the park the other day it was windy and cold and were the only ones in the HUGE park. It was fun to run around and not have the competition of 75 other children and 100 other parents running around. Now it is back to school, back to a regular schedule.