Mom had been really specific in her will about who would get what, but it all boiled down to my sister and me splitting the jewelry and china sets, and Dad getting everything else until he died.

My sister and I looked at the lists from Mom's will, looked at each other, and did this kind of shuffle with accompanying, "You know, actually . . . " Then we sat down at the kitchen table with Mom's jewelry boxes and took turns. Sis chose one thing she really liked, then I did the same. It worked out really well and was quite civil. There were some things that neither of us wanted, but that my sister's daughter liked, and I said I was fine with her taking them. Which I was.

I suppose that, strictly speaking, my sister's "side" got 2/3s when Mom had divvied things up very equitably between Sis and I. But I didn't have an emotional attachment to the things my niece liked, and I figured I got more out of making her happy than I would have out of shoving a bunch of unwanted jewelry into a drawer at home.

Dad was really surprised at how well it went, because in the larger family things went rather less civilly. (The saga of gramma's diamond ring! The hand-made cedar chest with gouges that mysteriously showed up in its top just before it came to me! The money from the real estate that Grandpa sold, which never got passed on to his son!)

(Laughing at Tep and the banana.) Yes, my brother is a good guy, but it's totally Too Much Togetherness. Also, what hec said. He needs to make a decision on the job front. or something...

All I know is that one of my proxy nieces had better turn into a Goth, because my heirlooms won't make sense to anyone outside of the subculture.

Oh, I'm sure you won't have to worry about THAT.

You train them well, Jilli-Wan.

It's kind of unbalanced in our house. I have a couple of mirrors, a washstand, a nightstand, a small library table and a console table, batter bowls, Depression Glass serving pieces, a salt piggin, a brass and milk glass nightlight, table lamps, stuff from my grandmother, and great-aunt, my aunt, and my mom. I have my mom's diamonds--I don't wear diamonds--and a bar pin and lavaliere from my grandmother, and a heart locket from H's mom and his dad's onyx and gold signet ring. H doesn't wear jewelry, and I don't wear gold. The XDiL had the locket, but it's a family piece, it stays in the family, even if she doesn't.

We have just a few things from H's family--a thick white china mixing bowl with a blue band, and a set of stainless flatware monogrammed "USNavy". They, and the twin bowl his mom kept and still uses, were given to them in Immigration, when they were waiting for transport to the home of their sponsors. Treasures. We use them all, frequently.

There's more stuff: a gorgeous bonnet-top chifforobe with a stack of drawers and mirrored doors, a pressback Victorian rocking chair, a beautiful mahogany drum table, grandfather clock, and small occasional tables, that I wish we could have brought. But we don't have room, so those are the things I left back in the NC house with StY. Miss them, though. Him too.

I had the aunt's daughters over before we left to ask them to go through the photos and take what they wanted, and asked if there were any small pieces of Mom's they wanted. They each got some things, though not the pitcher and basin--Mom had already given them the steeple clock and the portrait H and I had done of our grandmother, from an old photograph.

And I left them with the 24x20 inch mahogany frame with bubble glass containing the badly foxed picture of our grandmother. What they do with it is up to them.

And still? Too much stuff right now.

a bar pin

I read this so quickly it made me wonder, "What's a BRA pin?"

I don't have any family heirlooms (unless you count a framed Monet print that belonged to my paternal grandmother that I like just because it was hers). There were a few things of my grandfather's that I would have liked, but my aunt has them, and I guess they'll stay in her family.

Does your grandmother have any pull with them - could you tell her how they're behaving?

Oh, don't get me started. My grandmother is under this immature idiot's thumb. She spent my wedding telling my mother it was her fault that he hadn't come. She's been calling us every day to whine that we have to 'fix things'. She thinks we are in the wrong, because he's her golden boy (whereas my mother, who does everything for her, can't ever do anything right). I'm giving up with the situation. The only reason we're in contact with him is because it made my grandmother happy, but she has been just as immature as him over the situation, and I'm done with it and him. I saw him treat my mother like this growing up, and he is in no way going to do the same thing to me. < /rant > OK, breathing again now!

She's been calling us every day to whine that we have to 'fix things'.

Get re-married? Take out a billboard apologizing abjectly for ruining *his* big day? Maybe offer to cut off a finger in penance?

I mean, seriously, how does one "fix" an event that someone decided to not attend? It's not about "fixing," it's about making you grovel because you didn't make your day all about someone else.

(Which I know you know; it's just so crazy-making. People often need a clean reinstall.)

Unrelatedly, I have to shower because I was dumb enough to actually spritz a perfume sample ON me first, instead of on a paper strip, and I smell like rotting seaweed. (Which is, actually, a smell I like [no, for real], when it's actual seaweed lying on the sand, NOT when it's ME smelling like rotting vegetation.)

Sometimes the amount of family stuff there is feels like an avalanche poised to fall on me head. My mother was known as a Keeper, so she ended up with some pretty remote family stuff, like my great-aunt's husband's mother's bed. My father was the only child on his mother's side, so that river of stuff everyone has, like china and silver, flowed down to us. His only cousin got most of the stuff from Dad's father's parents, since she was the one in town, although she still felt ill-used about the furniture we got. As far as I know, only my mother really cares; she holds grudges close.

The hard part is that sense of obligation that these things should go to someone who would remember who they belonged to and what they meant.

No seaweedy Steph.

Seska, I'd be tempted to just publish a missive to your offending relative consisting of an engraved hand with thumb and three fingers tucked. I have no patience with people of that mind, and tend to let them babble and stew in their own bile. Being careful not to get any on me, of course. I hope it settles down soon and you can get past it.

Teppy, it's a lovely thing. 10kt, so no real monetary value. But it's charmingly engraved, and the portrait we had done shows her wearing it on the satin neckpiece tied around her throat. I have a copy of the photo. Plans have always been to frame the portrait in a shadowbox with the bar pin displayed with the picture. May do it still.