One item of significance that you have had forever?

[thesummerqueen]

My family is full of weird little trinkets and things. Unfortunately the three things passed down to me that might be the most valuable aren't here. I have a china teapot and a china teacup that were my grandmother's, and a fine pearl necklace that was my great-grandmother's, currently residing in my mother's much more secure home.

I also have recipes from both women, and my aunt and my mother, which makes a thread of culinary continuity that I really like.

We have tons of pictures in boxes and artwork and needlework and all sorts of shit my aunt has squirreled away, but sometimes she sends us little boxes of things. I love history, and my family is so closed-mouthed to each other that any physical "evidence" I get of my past is precious.

I submit to you something my uncle wrote to their beagle "Snoopy" while at summer camp when he was very young:



And my aunt:



I spent the better part of a week going through two boxes of photos and slides and old letters. As much as the china and pearls, they're very valuable to me, and probably the only thing my mother and I can have extended conversations on. Like this one of my great-grandfather, Rufus Cohen, who played trumpet (which my uncle still has) in a speakeasy during Prohibition: