I ran across these lines from Psalm 19 this morning and got thinking about just how “one day tells a story to the next”:

² One day tells a story to the next.
One night shares knowledge with the next
³ without talking,
without words,
without their voices being heard.

What knowledge is our day “sharing with the next”?  What traditions have we passed down?  What has been accepted?  The next generation clearly don’t want our good china or best recipes, while they might be happy to inherit our jewelry and silverware if the items can be readily converted to cash. The NYTimes recently dealt with this issue in relation to the family china: “Younger people are just not interested” says the article. “The dishes are frequently one of the items left over at estate sales. Storage units and landfills are brimming with it.”  No one is to blame; it is just that the world has changed so much.  Between us and our grandparents, a big break.  Between us and our grandchildren, a chasm.  They don’t have our habits, our concerns, our way of doing things, our sense of history.  So says the old lady.

Our generation greatly widened this divergence from tradition, so we can’t exempt ourselves from blame.  We bridled (no pun intended) at registering for wedding china and silver; we were the first generation of women to regularly wear slacks and then – blue jeans.  My grandparents, with their Depression/WWII era thrift and discipline, were completely flummoxed by their grandchildren approaching adulthood in the late 1960s.  For good reason. But we at least had lives that looked a little like theirs.   We ate meals together, celebrated holidays in traditional ways, and wore pajamas and robes.

But the change is almost absolute at this point – this generation has kitchens, yes, and many of them are very pretty kitchens because they are seldom used.  This generation celebrates the more consumer-related holidays in grand gift-giving fashion, but skip church services and big sit-down family dinners. Either they never wear pajamas or maybe I just can’t differentiate between their daywear and their nightwear.  They are much kinder to their children than we were, but their children are not kinder to them.  Would I have gotten out of cooking or going to church on Christmas Eve if I thought I could?  Maybe.  But I was always glad that I had not. 

Of course, there are many more differences from our generation.  No planning menus a week in advance, no Christmas Clubs, no new hats for Easter.   All gone by the board, along with top sheets on the bed.  Again, I don’t know if the new generation is right or wrong, but they don’t seem any happier.  And there is surely no room in their lives for the family china or our string of pearls or the workaday cookbooks stuffed with recipes clipped from newspapers that were actually printed on paper.

One note here: I have almost nothing in common with the Conservative Right in this country (more on that another time), but I can understand (although not sympathize with) their extreme last-gasp effort to roll back the tide.  I might have a little more empathy if they were concentrating on the worst of it – improving slipping education levels, decreasing recidivism, working to curb and cure drug abuse, and limiting the power of technology in our lives.  But they would rather spend their efforts sweeping away those things in which life really is better – civil rights, women’s rights, vast improvements in public health, tolerance of all kinds.  And all this in the name of returning to the glory of the past.  Enough on that for now.

I realize that “things” like dishes are not important in any ultimate sense, but they are part of our lives.  As Borges notes about his possessions in his wonderful poem, “Things”: “They’ll long outlast our oblivion; And never know that we are gone.” 

The china and the pajamas and the recipes are only symbols; but I do care about the loss of communal family things – like leisurely dinners together or the games and sing-a-longs of car trips before everyone had their own source of entertainment under their thumbs.  I miss sitting in a pew in church candlelight and just being quiet together.  But when you change some things, others follow.  We can write a will, but we cannot control our real legacy.  Things like china are only reminders, placeholders.  I will hold onto my china (for now) and my values, but I cannot force them on anyone else.  And as for the things, they’ll “never know that we are gone.”

If you want to read a story about coming to terms with the loss of valued items in our lives, you might try “The Mustard Seed.”  For loss of rituals, you might try “Baptismal Rights.”  Regarding the rituals and habits of old folks, you might try “Routine is the Housekeeper of Inspiration.” And just know that the next time we move – whether to assisted living or the nursing home or the cemetery – the china is not going with us.