“I’m getting old.” The lugubrious tone was hilarious.
“Why in particular?” You have to remember that this is my son. If he’s feeling old, he must see me as ancient… I wasn’t giving him that opening though.
“I like Antiques Roadshow.” I tried, unsuccessfully, to restrain the smile. It could be worse. Apparently it was. He was watching the ‘box set’ of episodes and thoroughly enjoying them.
My own age nibbled at my heels… I remembered the show starting with Arthur Negus. Worse than that, I remembered ‘Going for a Song’ when that started too, with the avian automaton that heralded each episode.
“I used to hate it,” he said. “It was boring when you watched it.” Which I always did. My mother had a small antiques business for years and I had grown up surrounded by the old things in my great-grandparents’ homes. The personal heirlooms once owned by their grandparents. Nothing spectacular, just the homely little things passed down through families.
There was my great- grandmother’s dance card, with every dance taken and her first fan, pierced ivory brisé, threaded with a faded yellow ribbon. Bone china and carved wood, an egg made of glass embossed with Happy Easter and a daffodil. A display cabinet in figured walnut and bevelled glass full of wonderful, small things, each with a story attached… each a part of the family history. My history. My sons’ history too.
For me these little objects had been alive because I had a living thread that bound me to them in my great-grandparents. They could tell me the stories of each object… and from there weave the greater tapestries of their lives, sharing moments from their childhood when Victoria was queen and the ‘dark satanic mills’ coloured the honeyed stones of Yorkshire black.
I suppose that’s why I have always loved antique shops where you can touch and place your fingers where others have before… why I managed to collect antique fans for a while and imagine, in the fluttering feathers, delicate gauze and spangles, the stories of the young ladies who hid behind them and flirted with their eyes.
But the conversation had moved beyond my ruminations, somehow going from past to future via ‘Tomorrow’s World’, ‘Star Trek’ and the numerous sci-fi and fantasy books we had both read. I could remember seeing prototypes of many of the things we now pretty much take for granted. How futuristic it had seemed to think that one day we might make video calls… and now I have that function on my phone and never bother to use it. They’ve even been able to transport sub-atomic particles… a first step to the transporter beam one day?
For a moment I had the very real sense of the flowing stream of time. Not just the knowledge that we are all, at every moment, poised between past and future, but something almost indescribable, seeing the me of that moment as part of a stream intimately connected with our lives. Although we know time is passing and history unfolding, we do not feel ourselves to be part of it, rather we feel ourselves to be separate and watch time pass us by, almost as if we are the one static point in the universe, simply because we observe from the stasis of the ego and the perceived now that has already fled.
The marvels of a future born in our past are already here and they are constantly being brought into our lives. “What the human mind can imagine,” said my son, “we’ll always find a way to create.” He’s right too. And it will be the people who think they are ordinary who make that happen… the writers, the dreamers, the child now building something with blocks … as well as the scientists. How much a part of history are we? How are we to know? The objects on the Antiques Roadshow and in my great-granny’s cabinet were often just the ordinary things of everyday life. It is only time and history that gives them a special value in our eyes. We are ordinary people in an everyday world… but who knows how the future may see any one of us? Time has its own perspective and we are caught in its current even now, who knows what it holds for any one of us?
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
I remember when my mother looked at me and with obvious shock said “You’re going gray.” I didn’t understand until the day my son told me he had joined AARP.
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Apart from the obvious bit likes aches… and gravity… I find I’m enjoying the whole process 🙂
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I really would revel and enjoy looking around st your treasures, Sue. Thanks for the “peek!” I don’t worry about silly things my kids who are 30, 34 and 35 say. They can be quite amusing! We aren’t ild, so how can they be?! 🙂 🙂
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Sorry, Sue. Important word looks like “ild” is really meant yo be old! Lol my eyes and fingers on cell phone don’t always cooperate.
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Neither do mine… 😉
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Theey make me smile too… my eldest is 31… being old has shifted its focus a lot in the past few decades 😉
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Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie and commented:
It is true, we are busy making the past, right now…
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This post brings such memories, a lifetime away. Everyone who wached that show that I knew are dead. I now am in that category with the Star Trek ect. Thanks for sharing, great post.
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Thank you… I am glad it brought back the memories 🙂
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My son thinks 24 sounds old. He’ll be 25 next year and will probably go into a serious decline. On the plus side, when I reminded of my age as I puffed up a hill behind him he said, “I forget. I never think of you as being THAT old.” Taking it as a compliment.
I love old things which have links to past generations, which is why my house is full of what others would probably call junk.
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My sons are 31 and 28… and the closest I got to a compliment was, “You’re not that old… ARE you?”
I seem to have ‘lost’ most of those special things over the years… but the memories are almost as good…and easier to pack.
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We don’t talk about age much in our family. My “children” are 32 and 29, but apart from the slight physical limitations, I don’t really feel my age. But then I bend over to pick up a tissue off the floor, and my lower back goes out for days. sigh…
I have many antiques, but very few from family. I wish I knew their stories. ☺
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I don’t think we have to feel our age… in spite of gravity and the odd creak… who says we have to. The nicest thing my son ever says to me is, “Mum, you’re regressing…” 🙂
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Perfect. ☺ I have always maintained that I really had my first “childhood” when my own children came along. 💕
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I’m having far more fun with this version of childhood now I’m old enough to enjoy it 🙂
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My oldest daughter – 36 – says ‘I’m feeling old, Dad’ when she wants to wind me up. I always respond ‘Never, ever, tell your parent that you feel old!’
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It’s the other way round here… I point out my eldest son’s grey hairs 😉
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Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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My children are 30 and 33. Where did the time go? They now think some of our ‘stuff” is antique – oh boy! Thoughtful post, Sue.
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They’ve called me and antique… ! It really does seem to fly by doesn’t it?
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Old, what is old? I don’t feel old, and I certainly don’t think I’m old, but young people don’t have a son who is 43 (my youngest is 32). I have a few antiques, most passed down to my mom and then to me.
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My sons would probably say they have an antique too 😉
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I often wish I had a warehouse filled with the ‘ordinary things’ of my childhood. I could auction them off to fund my retirement! 😉
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You and me both, Eliza. Most of mine went to fund the time after Nick’s attack.
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