Gramma's Vases

In all the time I knew her, my Gramma Rose never lived in anything bigger than a two bedroom apartment. She wasn't rich with stuff, but boy she made the best peanut squares ever.

Mostly, she and Grampa Lee would come to see us, but on the rare occasion we'd go to her home, I would admire two matching vases that sat on a little bookcase in her living room. She told me my dad bought them for her when he was in the Korean War. More accurately, Dad said, he bought them for her while on leave in Tokyo.

I would tell Gramma, "I love these vases," and she would always say, "You can have them when I go."

"Where you going, Gramma?" I'd tease.

She would only point up, and I'd always say, "You moving upstairs to a smaller place? No room for vases?"

She say, "Acchhh!" and smile.

It was our schtick. I was a kid, and she was in her 70s, so we were easily entertained.

As Gramma aged, she had to be moved into a home. I wasn't part of any move, and the vases left my mind. She died, shortly after that move. She has not left my heart.

A few years later, I visited my cousin Michael's new house for the first time, and when I walked in there they sat on his fireplace mantle.

"My vases!" blurted from my lips.

Okay, that was awkward. He asked what I meant, and I told him the story. We left it at that, but a few months later, he handed me a box. and inside, wrapped in pages of the Chicago Tribune were my vases.

They aren't valuable, I would guess, really just trinkets from a Tokyo market in the 50s. But I love them visually, and I love knowing that my dad loved his mom enough to capture something for her and carry it back halfway around the world to share with her, and then, as it turns out, me.

It's funny, when we married, none of our furnishings went together. The great room's pieces are all Brad's, and that's fine because now on our mantle sit Gramma's vases.