It's Week 8 of the 2024 edition of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The project was created by genealogist Amy Johnson Crow, and the theme for this week is Heirlooms I have written previously about this particular heirloom, if you can call it that. But some objects are worth revisiting.
As far as I know, we have no priceless family heirlooms in my family; we certainly have none that I am in possession of. We moved a lot when I was a kid, so we did not tend to accumulate a lot of old things. And when my parents split up after my sisters and I were grown up, I was the daughter who stayed on the East Coast, while the rest of the family was in the West. If there were heirlooms to divvy up, my sisters would have gotten them. But I do have an exceedingly NOT priceless family heirloom. One of my favorite family "treasures" is less a family heirloom and more a family joke. It is spectacularly ugly. At some point, my mother quite logically got rid of it. Years later it found its way back to her.
Around 1960, my paternal grandmother had two enormous, tacky ceramic ash trays made, one for my parents and one for my uncle and aunt. It's the size of a dinner plate and is iridescent pink and white, with gold accents, a big pink rose, and "The Petrinis" in big, gilt letters across the middle. I am sure my grandmother thought it was beautiful. And while I loved her dearly and miss her every day, I have to admit that this ash tray is seriously hideous. At some point in the 1980s, my parents finally sold it at a community garage sale.
Another 10 years passed. Then my mother opened up a gag birthday present from a friend. Surprise! It was the ugly ash tray! The friend had bought it at that garage sale a decade earlier and put it away to use just for this purpose. Eventually my mother gave it to me, her only child to have kept the Petrini name after marriage. I gleefully hung the ugly ash tray in my entryway. And I am grateful that my mom's friend found a way for us to keep this heirloom in the family.
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