tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post8405977622236561170..comments2024-02-19T05:12:30.844-05:00Comments on Oh Boym: The Bust of Goldcbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03342342242345926624noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post-73730560028360210982010-01-26T23:01:53.946-05:002010-01-26T23:01:53.946-05:00(Part 2)
Both my brothers wanted the razors for th...(Part 2)<br />Both my brothers wanted the razors for the reasons people want such items, imagining them being of great value or possessing some talismanic power.<br />I decided the safest thing to do was give them to a store called Sui Generis on East 58th Street that sold, as the names suggested, expensive, one-of-a-kind objects. Not long after they accepted the razors, the store closed and the owners made no attempt to find me. I was greatly relieved. <br /><br />There are families that retain items of sentimental and/or material value. My grandmother had many such objects, including the Gucci Wallet I mentioned in the next blog. When she moved, at the age of 85, from Los Angeles to Florida, a year of so after the Northridge earthquake, she was intent on running her own affairs. Toward that end, she hired a couple to run her errands, hang her pictures, and, I suspect, flatter her vanity. <br /><br />As she had moved to a smaller apartment, she stored many boxes at this couple's house. We never learned their name or where they lived. When my grandmother died in 2002, we emptied her apartment but found none of her bone china, or Baccarat. We did find a length of opera glove, and black ostrich feather fan with tortoise sticks. (Charlotte also found her grandmothers and as it was in better condition, we had it opened and framed and it hangs above our bed.) I also found a little silk purse filled with French coins from the 40s, so light I think they float. In a battered suitcase, we found three fur coats, including a white one so abused by the Florida heat, it appeared to be made of squirrel not mink. (Charlotte wears an auburn one when the temperature drops below freezing. It's a little short on Charlotte but my grandmother would have looked very chic in it. )<br />Most of her good jewelry was sold years earlier to pay for my grandfather's medical care, and the best of the pieces that remained were auctioned with the exception of a few pieces judiciously given to each of her three granddaughters-in-law by my stepmother. As for the treasures—the Georg Jensen silver, lost.<br />As to remnants, scattered among her grandchildren. <br /><br />Life is odd, your family preserved its inheritance by recognizing the totem powers to ward off a paranoid tyrant and the Kafkaesque system that replaced him. While most everything in my family was lost, and the best of it, recalled in a poem I wrote shortly after my grandfather's death:<br /><br />LEGACY <br /><br />We die with empty hands<br />That was your final lesson.<br /><br />You might have taught:<br />We live with empty hands.<br />But that would have been too abstract<br />A gesture. Instead,<br /><br />You wished me every bright object, everything<br />Sweet, everything ripe, but left nothing<br />Having lost everything<br />You accumulated over 80 odd years.<br /><br />You should have told me:<br />We expand, contract, and in the end<br />Have nothing to show for our pain<br />But our pain.<br /><br />Now, a year after your death,<br />I am no closer to understanding how things are lost<br />Or why it is necessary<br />We must lose them.rwordplayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14273597973215378473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post-11895739771995675942010-01-26T23:01:30.826-05:002010-01-26T23:01:30.826-05:00The notion of family treasure is exceedingly movin...The notion of family treasure is exceedingly moving and the subject of much mythology. I'm delighted the gold in your story proved solid.<br /><br />In the case of my family, there was a cursed star sapphire ring. The sapphire was the palest blue imaginable, blue before it fades to gray, and when held to the light, a large fully formed white star appeared in its center. My grandfather wore it and would lose his fortune; my father inherited it, and he would also lose his fortune and die a lonely, miserable death. My eldest Brother inherited and his wife became ill of lung cancer and died in her early 40s. My brother stopped wearing the ring and one day it disappeared. He assumed it was stolen by the housekeeper. Poor woman. <br /><br />There was also a cursed set of seven golden razors. I had never seen anything quite like it. Across the top of each blade was the day of the week in red enamel, and the set fit in worn leather box that when opened, revealed an interior of Bordello red velvet or satin. It belonged to my great uncle who died young and whose wife went mad. The razors were passed them on to my grandfather, whose bad luck, in everything but love, was the stuff of legend. After the man died, my grandmother left them in the back of a draw and never touched them. Why she died, my first stepmother gave them to me. At the time, I wanted nothing of my grandfather other than the watch used to teach me to tell time. (Part 1)rwordplayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14273597973215378473noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855223901782590860.post-37712797727473478352009-12-10T12:05:27.447-05:002009-12-10T12:05:27.447-05:00Your grandmother had the right idea, and a great s...Your grandmother had the right idea, and a great sense for subject matter. This is a far better design solution than burying the gold coins in the forest that my grandfather did, only to forget the exact spot and never see them again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com