The kids’ father is finally selling the house that I once lived in, and he keeps finding bits and pieces of my stuff. Why he gives me old video tapes and not the still photos that I’ve been requesting for eight years is a little baffling and a lot aggravating, but it’s nice to see sections of my past pop up.

When we were first married, about fifteen years ago, we were both into hand-loading, mostly rifle and pistol cartidges. It was primarily his hobby, as I didn’t enjoy working up the loads, but I liked the small meticulous parts of it. So my grandfather gave me some of his old reloading equipment. OK, maybe some of the bullets would still be useable, as they’re fairly inert, but primers have an expiration date, and these were way past it.

I treasure these bits for the historical value. These are things that my Grampa used in his everyday life, and I adore having things that were close to him. One little measurer has sat on my dresser since he gave it to me (and now that I think about it, they gave me that dresser too.)

Primers are the explosive components of a round, and therefore are a little trickier to have around the house than assembled cartridges or plain bullets. I keep them up high where children or cats can’t jostle them. It’s not quite like having old dynamite laying around, but it’s not particularly healthy either. I don’t happen to have any powder, but the danger there would be that it comes in larger quantities, not that it’s more flammable. Primers explode; powder just burns really fast.

Fiddling around with this stuff makes me feel connected to my family. I’ve been the lucky one; all of my grandparents that died (Gramma B’s still going strong!) have personally selected treasures to hand down to me, things which they knew meant something to me and which symbolized a connection between us, a thread handed down through time. I may not send the same items down to my grandchildren, but I’ll keep the thread intact. Who knows; by then, they may feel the need to collect antique digital cameras, and I’ll be able to fix them up.

Seeing these things makes me want to go dig out and photograph some of the other stuff, and I have a lot of it. Grampa gave me several tool boxes and his tackle box, which brings him close every time I go through it and handle the knives and the hooks that he worked with as his second career. Grandma gave me the antique blue glass that sits on my bathroom window sill, and the dishes that we used to eat breakfast from, and some fantastic linens that were made by her mother and her mother-in-law. My Grampa B and I used to go through the family history documents together, and while I know my mom and my aunt have first crack at them right now, he meant for me to be the one to hang on to them in the long term.

I don’t have a very good memory for the oral histories, but the tangible stuff brings it all back to me. If I can hold it in my hand, I can see the ones who came before me, and if I squint a little more, the ones coming after. Hey, looks like the red hair’s not bred out of us yet! Provided I don’t blow us all up, that is. I’ll try not to.