A few months ago, while visiting my parents, I spent the night in my childhood room. Many things had changed since I was young, but there was one piece of furniture I remembered. A little dresser leaning against the wall. A bit unassuming, it probably wouldn’t stick out to the average person, but as I looked memories came flooding back. Things I had cherished, things I had worried about and friendships I’d made.

The little dresser had gone through many hands since I had last used it and the years were showing. Someone (perhaps me) had colored in the crevices with a green crayon. One wheel had fallen off the bottom and it now sagged on the floor. The sides had been roughed up by (not me, I would never do that 😉).

Suddenly, I wanted to fix it up and bring it back to where it once was. I asked my mom if I could take it and she said, “yes”!

Family Ancestry and a Water Stand

This dresser (or more accurately the water stand-now-used-as-a dresser) not only belonged to me as a child, it had also belonged to my mother and her mother when they were children. As I began to get it ready for refinishing I couldn’t help but wonder about who built it. With the detailed curved joints and routed edges. This piece, dating back to about 1910, had to have been done by hand, as many electric tools weren’t in mainstream use yet, but how was it done? The whole piece intrigued me.

Life Happened

My grandmother was a hard woman from what I remember as a child, and I never talked to her much growing up.

As an adult I learned more about her life and found she had gone through her share of heartache and pain, enduring a history I likely never would. The wear on this little dresser seemed to be speaking to all it had witnessed during the lives of its owners.

Becoming a US Citizen

My grandmother sailed to America with her parents when she was 7 years old. Her father had wanted to come sooner, but couldn’t convince his wife to travel on the ocean, she felt it wasn’t safe.

Then the Titanic sank.

Titanic Sinking

My great grandfather hid every newspaper he could find, afraid they would never make it to America if his wife heard the devastating news. As much as he tried, she still found out, it was too big of a story to hide. She surprised her husband by saying, “They will be safer now. We can go.” They sailed on the very next ship.

The Big Move

So the great trip began, with packing and buying tickets, preparing for a new life and saying goodbye to family they would leave behind. Within a year after arriving in the states, both of my grandmother’s parents contracted Typhoid Fever. Her father died at the age of 38 leaving his wife a widow at 32, with 6 children, in a new country. My grandmother was 8 years old.

It must have been a taxing life trying to bring in enough to care for a large family. They moved in with my grandmother’s aunt who had also moved to the states and somehow paid the bills. My grandmother quit school as soon as she was able to start bringing in an income and help with the family. At the age of 16 she started working as a switchboard operator for the telephone company. Which I understand to be a pretty prestigious job for the time.

A Relationship Match

The new job must have given her a little freedom. She enjoyed dressing up and spending time with her friends. She loved jewelry and even had a few fashion wigs that were all the rage. She married one of the young men in her group of friends. A local baseball hero who wanted to be with her more than with any other girl.

The Great Depression

The great depression hit two years before they got married. I sometimes wonder if they held off getting married, waiting for things to work out. As the lean times rolled on. Perhaps they decided to make the most of it and start their life together on faith.

The depression left a lasting impression.

When my grandmother died she had boxes of necklaces and earrings most of them shiny, colorful plastic. It was cost effective and added that splash of color to make an outfit complete. More telling were the piles of money stuffed in bureaus and under beds.

A huge storage of food in the basement, mostly expired, gave hope of no hungry days ahead. Never using the food, they always bought new food to eat from their pantry, but the basement was there as security.

The depression hit at such a pivotal time. They never quite recovered.

A Life of Poverty

Poverty does something to you, it changes how you see life and reality. Much like the scars on the dresser, you can fix it up and bring back the color, but some things will never be the same.

A different perspective isn’t necessarily to be mourned. Even though scars remain, that can’t be sanded out, it adds character and history. A meaningful story, that might not have otherwise come.

Alzheimer’s and Sacrifice

My grandmother lived to be 96 years old and spent the last 10 years of her life with Alzheimers and near complete deafness. There were times when I would look down the hall and see my mother helping her to the bathroom or helping her get dressed and wonder why God kept my grandmother here so long. She clearly wasn’t getting anything out of life. Maybe, I wondered, it was to give my mother the opportunity to show how angelic she was, for it took an angel to do the things she did.
As I refinished her dresser and brought back the charm from its early days, I felt like I was reaching back into the beginning of my grandmother’s life.

and I remembered.

I remembered, that as my grandmother’s mind was being ravaged by the affects of Alzheimers and she would be thrown back and forth in time, reliving anywhere from five minutes to 90 years ago. There were times she would laugh and joke with me.

I began to wonder if maybe my grandmother hadn’t always been hardened and grumpy. I began to think maybe life had been hard and resulted in her currently, fleeting, hardened self.

So here I was thinking, as I sanded and glued and nailed pieces back together. Maybe my grandmother had lived that long so that I could also catch a glimpse of who she really had been. In a way, as the dresser began to take shape and show it’s true self, I began to see that my grandmother deserved the same respect.

The respect to regain and be remembered for who she had been.