Things Left Behind Suggest Stories

imageI’ve been on the road for the past two weeks, helping family members get organized to downsize and move to a new home. Among other things, I spent the better part of two days rummaging around my dad’s attic in Vermont. My job was to determine which items should be given away, and which should be kept within the family.

This was no easy task. My father has alimageways been an avid collector and Saver of Things. Walking through his farmhouse in Vermont is like being in a very homey museum or antiques shop. There’s the oil lamp collection, the vintage China sets, the scientific instruments, and the cannons (yes, cannons), for starters. I was really trying to help organize the process, but I kept getting distracted. For example, I came across a collection of silver spoons, the kind travelers buy when they’re visiting a new place. As soon as I found some spoons from the 1915 San Francisco Exposition, I was hooked. I then had to try to recreate that long-ago trip. And then I polished the spoons. There was a box of trinkets from a trip to Japan in the 1950’s, a set of antique toothpick holders from India, and a Victorian portable writing desk. Everything I saw suggested some interesting story. Who wrote on that desk? What lady kept her calling cards in the delicately carved ivory case? What ancestor used that Confederate sword in battle?

In the end, I couldn’t decide to part with any significant portion of my dad’s collection. So I’m renting a storage place to store it all, which I guess makes me the family’s official new Saver of Things. But if I’m ever in need of a story idea, I’ll know where to go for inspiration.

Has a family object ever inspired you to write a story? Tell us about it!

14 thoughts on “Things Left Behind Suggest Stories

  1. My family owned a hunting and fishing lodge in Canada. I spent 3 summers there as a 11-14 year old helping my mom, older brother and twin sister run it. The many items my family saved (Cree Indian jewelry, pictures, moccasins, etc.) has nawed at me to write an adventure book about my experiences. I’m having a little trouble getting started though………..

    • What a wonderful setting for a story that would be, Sheila! I’m betting that each of those saved treasures will help you recall detailed memories of that place and time, the kind of details that bring a story to life.

    • He is, Jordan. He actually inspired a character I’ve written! I’ll never become a collector, but I guess I’m now the Curator, lol.

  2. My grandmother left a cryptic note and a ring she said she had worn since 1942 (one that was not given to her by my grandfather) and we uncovered an early WWII romance with a New Zealand Spitfire pilot. There’s a book in there for sure…

  3. My parents also discovered a photograph in my spinster great-aunt’s underwear drawer revealing she’d had an affair for over 25 years and no one in the family had any idea…Hmm..now the females in my family are sounding like collectors of men!

  4. My wife’s family homestead, a small, ca. 1830 farmhouse we’re living in now, has shown up in a couple things~ a NaNo effort, set in the 1860’s, a short story about the coming of aviation in the 1930’s, one about watching Sputnik cross the sky (with the old/new contrasted, of course) a number of songs, and numerous poems (or poetic attempts) I guess you could say the place speaks to me~ I just hope to do it justice..

  5. It is… Small and simple (either flush, plumb, or level ~ rarely two, and NEVER all three).
    I’ll see if I can’t find a decent pic and send it along.
    Thanks~!
    🙂

  6. Great post. Made me look around my own small apartment for the stories in various objects, starting with a few family heirlooms, but moving on to the things I’ve acquired over the years and even recently. Each object is a storehouse of ideas and characters if you look carefully enough.

    Two examples:

    1. the framed picture of my dad and his brother holding hands and dressed in culottes that look like skirts. My dad’s hair is still in blond ringlets because in those days they didn’t cut boys hair until they went to school. When I was little, I used to show the picture to friends and say, “That’s my dad when he was a little girl.” (I have a minor character in my current WIP who is gay…will see if I can ‘use’ the picture in backstory.)

    2. an oil painting of two Rwanden boys walking down a dirt road, dressed in tatters, arms around each other’s shoulders. I wanted something to remind me when finances get tight that I am very fortunate, but the painting gives rise to many story ideas.

    Thanks so much.

  7. When I used to visit my grandmother, who raised her son alone from the time he was two, I would delicately ask about my grandfather. She wove a picture of a harsh man, emotionally damaged by mustard gas in WWI, he controlled her and separated her from her family until one day she ran away. When she died, I received a box of keepsakes. In the bottom, were two love letters, full of fun and humour and longing and love. And a third letter dated just after the last letter in which my Grandmother testified to finding Jesus. My grandmother said that when my father was 15, she hired a PI to find her husband, and he followed the trail across country but lost it it the Carolinas. Years later in doing ancestry researches, we discovered two things: my grandfather moved to California and lived there for the rest of his life doing an easy to trace job for the railroad, and we were unable to find the marriage record between my grandparents. Questions abounded! Did she really hire a PI? Were they pretending marriage for the sake of the baby because he still had some kind of impediment from his first marriage and Grandma broke off the relationship when she found God? My grandmother had seemed like such an open and honest woman but her death repainted her as a woman of intrigue and mystery and perhaps a touch of naughtiness.

    • How interesting–there are definitely two sides to every story. And as writers, we get to tell the tale! Thanks for sharing, Julie!

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