Little Things

Little things bring Granny Hat so much joy.  The deeper she feng shuis (can that be a verb?) the pile of tiny, forgotten treasures grows.  Each one of them is the key that opens a story door.  Our newly embraced minimalism tasks us with ditching the little things and simply saving memories.  Granny used to read a delightful, whimsical book to her kids titled Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge in which a young boy visits an elderly friend named Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt with an odd collection of things to refresh her memory: sea-shells, a string puppet, a military medal, a chicken egg. His plan works like a charm and as Miss Nancy holds those silly items in her hands, she recalls stories from her life to share with the boy. Even little,  foolish things can become treasures if they are powerful enough to bring back a sweet memory.

#1 Favorite Little Things:  bits of fabric, buttons & lace

For her readers who love to “paint” with fabric, Granny Hat wants support for hoarding tiny bits of left-over material.  She likes the idea of the fat quarters waiting backstage until curtain time, a good old quilting project.  Her friend, David Johnson, once expressed confusion about the art of quilting.  “Why take perfectly brand-new, beautiful fabric, ruthlessly cut it up into tiny pieces, only to sew it back together again? It doesn’t make sense!”  And yet, as the great impressionist himself, Vincent Van Gogh, observed, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” So, most of Granny’s fabric gets to hang out a bit longer because truly beautiful things are born when they get “sewn back together”. And adding a little lace or a well-placed vintage button doesn’t hurt.

 

 

Granny has quite a collection of quilts made of well-loved dresses and shirts by Great Grandma Grivey and Aunt Violet.  They have graced the foot of her bed for years and have helped keep everyone warm through many long winters (California style winters, that is). Each one reminds us of something Grandma Grivey often said, “waste not, want not” and she dutifully stitched up those nine patch squares on her old manual Singer sewing machine.  Granny has made some of her own quilts too, for weddings, grand-babies, and just for fun.  There is a certain dotted Swiss creation with splashes of pink and green in process right now for a sweet, new little lady in the family.

The beauty of quilting is that you can never completely predict what “great thing” is going to emerge when all the tiny pieces have been sewn back together.  Granny once set out to fashion a Double Wedding Ring quilt for her eldest son, Christopher and his new wife, Mandy, who loves daisies.  She found three companion fabrics that featured daisies on blue, yellow and green fields.  In the interest of fairness, she cut up those fabrics into equal piles and sewed them back together, with a few other colors added for pop and spark.  But Granny had committed a color wheel sin; she neglected to remember that blue and yellow make green and sure enough, when she stood back and admired her finished product, it was very daisy but very green.  Some people like to name their quilts. Much like a trail name (PCT section of this blog) these titles reflect something about the personality or process of the finished product.  Granny had no choice but to name that quilt Green Grow the Daisies. She will never forget the real daisies at that September wedding  or the harvest moon shining down on her son and new daughter in law, a favorite memory.

#2 Favorite Little Things:  sheet music

Right in the middle of Granny Hat’s feng shui joy, a friend dropped off multiple boxes of old sheet music, a truly vintage collection that had belonged to Miss Shirley, a lovely, local lady who accompanied musical theater shows, played for USO concerts and shared her music all over the Bay Area.  Granny’s sentimental hoarding tendencies shot through the roof; there were songs from the 30’s and 40’s, classic movie themes, Gershwin, early Disney tunes, folk songs, USO favorites from the World Wars. Granny remembers her father crooning Red Sails in the Sunset, White Cliffs of Dover and her mother playing a rollicking version of Buttons and Bows or Tea for Two on the piano.  These songs CANNOT be forgotten, they tell stories of another era, another life.

 

Some of them were performed to boost the spirits of brave men and women fighting for freedom.  Others were sung by some of the most talented musicians to grace our stages and vinyl records; Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, the Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Burl Ives just to name a few.

 

 

And then a few are just old – school funny…..

 

 

or even a bit awkward…..

 

 

But the artwork alone keeps Granny from dropping them into the recycle bin.  In today’s download – E copy –  sheet music dot com world, we have lost some artistic expression.  So, what to do with these musical treasures?  Granny kept a few…. well, OK…. a pretty big pile but she is sharing the rest with her fellow musicians in the community and she just may frame some for her piano studio. She promised herself to make room for the new collection by getting rid of music that no longer brings joy, maybe some duplicate copies of Reader’s Digest Song Anthologies or heavy folders of audition e prints like Part of Your World in 8 different keys.

#3 Favorite Little Things: out of the jewelry box

Mother’s dresser top was magical to young Granny Hat.  There was nothing fancy or valuable, just a couple of Avon perfumes and a beautiful comb and brush set that had belonged to Grandma Lloyd sitting on a round glass mirror tray. There was also a jewelry box with such interesting little treasures; rings, necklaces and pins. Mother was taken away too early in life, her laughter is missed every day.  Don’t want to forget, the little things bring back so many memories.

Granny opened her own jewelry box this morning and the memories just spilled out, clear as childhood.

There was the little burro pin that Grandpa Lloyd brought back from his business trip to Mexico City.  He told us about the music in the streets and the smell of the tortillas cooking in the open air. It also reminds Granny of a certain little donkey she used to sing about in the 4th grade, you know, the one that sang and danced and could eat with a knife and fork, Tingo Lay-O!

Does anyone remember the IXOYE fish necklaces of the 70’s?  Granny wore one every day in high school on the days she wasn’t wearing her choker. She put on the necklace and just like that she was back in the Calvary Chapel Tent in Costa Mesa listening to bands like Love Song, Children of the Day, 2^nd Chapter of Acts, Barry McGuire.  Maranatha!

 

 

Mother’s bracelet with the “going west” charms was a favorite as was the reindeer pin, a gift from the Norwegian doctor and his wife who lived in the mansion in front of  Granny’s first home, a cottage on the Santa Barbara Riviera.

 

 

The unique and beautiful necklace made of pinon seeds was handmade by Granny’s friends on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona where she went several summers for a Bible Camp.  She can still smell the fresh fry bread and feel the warmth of the campfires as songs were sung into the night. And when the fire began to die, our friends would tell us tales of the mesas, about the scary “skin walkers”, while the women tied our hair up with string in traditional Navajo fashion.  A very little thing can start the tales spinning in our heads, “it only takes a spark to get a fire going”.

Do you have some little treasures, memorials to your life story?  Granny Hat’s story isn’t over yet, but it grows and changes every day.  Old memories are sweet, some are sad, all filled with hope and longing of days to come. Repeat them to your children and grandchildren.  Granny thinks a little trove of keepsakes can be as good as a therapy session any day, hold them in your hand while you remember.

Top Photo:  Granny spotted these delicate flowers in a mossy hollow at the base of a raging waterfall.  They were standing so bravely in the pouring rain, simple, small, yet so powerful. She won’t forget them.

“but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise”                                  ICorinthians 1:27

Zechariah 4:10