The Surprising Durability of Things

Thought for the Fortnight

I made some soup last week and, in order to serve it, reached for my ladle. It is not a classy ladle – it probably came from Woolworth’s or the equivalent. It has a red plastic handle. But I suddenly had a memory of how and when I got it.

I had just moved into my first apartment of my own in my last year of college – at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I had spent my first two years in college dormitories, as was the requirement back then – women only (yes, it was a long time ago). My third year had been spent abroad in London.

A friend of a friend had graduated and was moving elsewhere. He had various kitchen utensils that he didn’t think worth the nuisance of taking with him, so he offered them to her to give to me. Included in this very welcome loot was the ladle. 

It was the autumn of 1962.

And somehow, it got packed up along with other things when I left Michigan and, with each subsequent move, this ladle came, too.

And here it is sixty years later in my London kitchen drawer, still perfectly useful.

Heirlooms

Of course, some old things have great importance. Perhaps you have some family heirlooms of one kind or another. Perhaps a vase or a painting or a piece of furniture that has been passed down through the family.

These tend to have huge sentimental – as well as possibly market – value. You look forward to passing them down to your own children or grandchildren.

Perhaps you even collect antiques.

Durability is their point. They have the weight of history and their age has a genuine importance. They are often seriously valuable.

I have few such things, although I do have one engraved serving spoon that was given to my German grandmother at the time of her marriage, some time just after the turn into the twentieth century. We like it and use it, although it is not the sort of thing I would ever go out to buy.

And I discovered fairly recently that a third cousin once-removed (I think, such relationships are incredibly complicated) from the same family line has a serving spoon very much like it. She found me through the internet some years ago and find the occasional fact in common.

Such things have huge sentimental value as a memory of our grandparents, but no great market value, I would assume.

Things last

But my interest here is not in the valuable stuff but the completely non-valuable stuff. 

To give another example, I also own a box of wooden (!) spools of sewing thread, passed on from my other grandmother when she died in 1961. Some of them probably go back to fifty years earlier when she first got married. They just sit there in their box and grow older. Occasionally, one gets used.

The truth of the matter is I am not a ‘things’ person. I don’t spend much time searching for beautiful things for my home. If I did, I would have replaced my ladle a long time ago. I seem to lack the ‘acquisitive’ gene or even that desire to ‘collect’ items of a particular kind.

Indeed, I am much happier to note that I still have friends acquired at roughly the same time as my ladle. One or two may be reading this post.

Nonetheless, sometimes I am just struck by the sheer durability things. Whether valuable or not.

We just keep them and use them and keep them and use them, with nary a thought.

They will outlast us all.

Over to you: What old oddments do you have in your drawer? Do you seek to own beautiful things? Or do you cherish family heirlooms?

A version of this post was initially published by SixtyandMe.com