Years ago, after my paternal grandmother passed away, her few belongings were distributed among her eight children and fifteen grandchildren. She had moved out of her farmhouse many years earlier, leaving it to her youngest son and his wife, who’d taken over the work at her small dairy farm. For years, she’d been living down the street in the same small village, in a modest house rented from the parish. 

So much there had seemed magical to me. The old wallpaper in the windowless washroom had an old Toile de Jouy pattern — figures in ball gowns that seemed to know they were dangerously out of place in this rustic home, and especially in close proximity to a shelf piled high with jars of home-made paté. There was just one toy in the house, a set of blocks in their rectangular case, which could be arranged to form six different scenes, all featuring my favorite childhood animation characters from The Magic Carrousel. These included a dog named Pollux who spoke in a posh British accent and a Jack-in-the-box called Zebulon. I adored this name and whispered it to myself for fun, swearing I’d have a son one day and name him Zebulon. Years later, I’d realize that Zebulon is the French translation of Zevulun, the perfectly Jewish name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel (I’ve failed to name any of my three sons Zebulon). 

Mémé’s house also had a wonderful clock that marked the hour by sounding Big Ben’s tune, a set of ceramic crocks for flour, sugar, coffee, and ‘spice,’ lined up on the mantel above the wood-burning stove, and a mysteriously off-limit linen closet. Up the narrow staircase, my favorite bedroom had a small hissing stove and a white porcelain sink. Before being sent up to bed in the winter, I’d be handed a brick that had been heated up in the stove and wrapped in thick cloth. I’d place it at my feet inside the bed, where it would radiate warmth into the thick, crisp sheets, keeping my toes warm all night no matter how cool the room. Breathing in the scent of the clean cotton sheets and polished wood floors, I’d drift off feeling like the heroine of a Brontë sister novel.

None of these objects belong to me now, but another heirloom, a diminutive, banged-up aluminum pot, is what I asked for and got. Mémé used it until her death, day in and day out, to boil water for coffee and her other beverage of choice, chicory. It’s light as a feather and must have been just as cheap, and it’s full of bumps and blackened on the outside by years of use. The small plastic black handle has been polished smooth by the old arthritic hand that picked it up, put it down, and scrubbed it clean more times than anyone could count. The pot speaks to me as a kind of record of these daily gestures, a token of the simple art of making do, of making things last. It whispers from a vanished world in which nothing that could be of use was ever discarded: odd bits of vegetables would go to build the broth, empty biscuit tins would hold a stash of buttons or store fresh honey on the comb. Paper bags would be folded and stashed away, bits of ribbon saved to wrap another present. Torn clothes would be mended or, at last resort, made into rags. 

I don’t fancy the specter of poverty that underlined these careful habits, but I often wonder what I could gain by wanting fewer things and tending to those I have more lovingly. Our contemporary economy of desire builds objects into bubbles that burst on contact, rarely delivering the promise of fulfillment that pulled us to them. To make the best of something old and rickety, to remain attached even when a newer, fancier, more attractive version could be had, is a kind of mindful discipline, a kind of path. Think of it as you think of choosing to love the same good man or woman over a lifetime instead of jumping over the fence to see if the grass is greener. Most likely, my grandmother would have assured you, it ain’t.