Possessions

Today as I was reading the New York Times I ran across an interesting question:If you had to leave your home in a big hurry what one item would you choose to save. Or stated another way, what one possession do you love most of all ?

As I thought about all the "stuff" we have accumulated in almost 58 years of marriage in over six different houses, I wondered what one thing is most precious to me.

Not any of the books or knickknacks. Paintings collected over the years. Jewelry. Computers. Furniture. Silverware. Etc etc. It is all just stuff.

The one thing I would grab on my way out in a hurry would be:

The small, black and white photograph of my mother that sits in a silver frame on a bookshelf in my living room. It is a formal studio portrait type popular back then. She sits in a decorative wooden chair. There is a painted landscape background. She is pictured in a white dress, white stockings, her dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her own mother, a farmer's wife but an accomplished seamstress, made this dress with fine tucks adorning the bodice.

The date of the photograph would be about 1915 or so. At this time my mother would have been about 22 years old and teaching school in a one room schoolhouse in rural Georgia near Madison, Georgia. She was single, having not yet met her future husband, my father.

Many times since she died at age 91, I touched this photograph and blew her a kiss saying "Goodnight Mother"

I wish I had just an hour or two to sit down with her again and tell her I understand so much of what she went through as she aged. Now that I am approaching age 80, I better understand the aches and pains; the joys and trails of enduring to old age she talked about back then.

What would you choose to save. What one material possession do you love most?