Family Stories Are Embodied in Cherished Possessions

When my husband proposed to me, he gave me his late mother’s diamond engagement/wedding ring. I have worn this ring every day for the past 25 years and every day I treasure it—not just because it was given to me by my husband but because it symbolizes a relationship that has developed over the years with the mother-in-law I never had the chance to meet—Annie Lester Crawley Hildreth. I have come to know Annie Lester, a wisp of a woman with a commanding, often stubborn, personality who loved her family, her husband, and her two sons with a fierce and powerful presence.

I know Annie Lester through the stories told amid tears and laughter by her family—her children, her siblings, and her nieces and nephews (her husband died just a few months after she did). For me, wearing Annie Lester’s ring connects me to her, a woman I never got the chance to know personally and now know only through her legacy. For me, the ring holds the stories of who she was, how she lived, and how she impacted the lives of so many who loved her and who she loved.

Cherished Possessions

Carolyn Folkman Curasi and her colleagues use the term “cherished possessions” and discuss the ways in which some family objects become more meaningful than their financial worth—they come to signify family histories and family values. Interviewing people about these kinds of possessions reveals multiple ways in which we mark their significance. We hold onto them for future generations, naming specific heirs and often providing guidelines about the future care and resulting responsibilities for these objects, whether pieces of furniture or pieces of jewelry. But most important, we mark these objects with stories.

• Cherished possessions are cherished because of the stories they hold: stories of the origins of the object, how the object come into the family’s possession, and how it has passed through the family’s hands. The younger generations hold onto these cherished possessions because they cherish the stories of who their family was and still is.
• Cherished possessions and their stories underscore the goals and values of a family across the generations. They may mark important historical events—one family interviewed told stories of a Civil War sword handed down by the great-grandfather; many families told stories about the family Bible passed down from daughter to daughter to record family history, births, marriages, and deaths.
• Cherished possessions hold stories about the people who first owned them and what they valued. One family interviewed talked about opera glasses passed down from a grandfather, a great lover of classical opera who named all 10 of his children after famous opera singers. Another woman talked about her mother valuing an old watch that her mother still wears because it connects her to her family, who were watchmakers, and symbolizes the values of precision and patience.

Many of us have these kinds of family heirlooms, objects that are not simply artifacts but embody the person to whom they belonged. Often they are a piece of jewelry. Podcast producer Jessica Alpert interviews people for her blog Chainmail about pieces of jewelry that have become cherished possessions and tells her own story of a ring she received from her grandmother. Her grandmother had a difficult early life as a Jew in Europe just as the war was threatening. She met her husband in 1938 and moved halfway around the word to El Salvador before losing her family to the death camps. Jessica treasures the ring although it has little monetary value. Once, when she thought she lost it, she become almost hysterical and tried to calm herself by saying, “It’s only a thing.” But of course, it is not “only a thing”—it is a symbol of her grandmother and her grandmother’s life. It is irreplaceable in the same sense that her grandmother is irreplaceable. But we have the stories and we hold onto them with loving care.

The Importance of Family Stories

My research in The Family Narratives Lab has focused on the telling of family stories across the generations, and how adolescents and young adults who know these intergenerational stories are better adjusted. Cherished family objects may enhance family storytelling. Whether these objects are worn or displayed every day or on special occasions such as holidays and reunions, they bring out the stories associated with them. As we tell and share these stories with our families, we create a shared history that connects us to our past family members in ways that help us understand who we are in the present.

My research findings came back to me when Jessica interviewed me about my mother-in-law’s ring. I began to tell stories about Annie Lester—about her growing up just a little wild in her teenage years, about her steadfast love for her husband when he was a POW in a German stalag during WWII, how she would lash out with a quick temper at anyone who didn’t treat her family right. And how she refused to cook on Sundays after church—that was her day of rest.

I never met Annie Lester. But I know her through the family stories, and in wearing her ring, I feel her love, the ferocious protective love she had for her family. Cherished objects connect us to the stories, and the stories connect us to the people. I may not be a blood relative, but my sense of who I am in the world, and how much I am loved by my family by marriage, is made real through the ring that I wear every day.