Hand Me Ups

Maddy's turn:

Chickie and I, as you know if you’ve read Not The Trip We Planned, are a bonded pair of long-time, long-distance friends, connected by a shared sense of humor and differentiated by our radically different personalities.

Last week’s post on Hand Me Downs made me laugh and prompted this post about Hand Me Ups--items that offspring may not need or want--but they can be badgered lovingly until they figure out what to do with them.

Parental Badgering is a subtle art and probably passed down intergenerationally in the same way trauma, eye color, and curly hair can be.  It just hasn’t been formally studied by social science yet.

I am well-qualified to hold forth on this as I inherited the Badgering skill from my mother who began early by earnestly pointing out to me household items that could (in Badgerese, this means “should”) be handed down.

Hand Me Ups fall into two primary categories (You are invited below to nominate others you can identify for future study.)

1)   Out-of-date, but still “good “ household items that have sentimental/historical value to the parental generation—usually related to entertaining (tablecloths, vases, china, good wool blankets) or personal history (family portraits, letters, books).

2)   Nostalgia-saturated toys, games, children’s clothing considered “timeless” and often motivated by hopes for a “next generation”.

Without a doubt, many things in both categories are carefully saved-for or hand-made by someone known and prized. They are laden with parental hopes, dreams or guilt and this gives them staying power.

I term these Hand Me Ups because they usually require the work of putting them Up somewhere—an attic if you are lucky or on a high shelf because a defining feature of Hand Me Ups is that they are being Treasured or Saved. (Basements are tricky for HMUs due to mold and dust and getting buried under Other Stuff)

Unlike hand-me-downs, that are clearly meant to be worn until worn out, HandMeUps tend to be rarely used and hard to store and can require special handling, moth balls, and notably, space.

But like Elizabeth Warren speaking in the Senate, the next generation persists and resists.

“We just don’t have the space right now.”

“I think those might set off Phoebe’s allergies; can you keep them for me awhile?”

“Our whole Household Look is mid-century modern. Really, that lamp just won’t work; how about you offer it to Cousin Hilary?”   The lateral pass to another family member is a sophisticated move.

Living, as I am now, in a senior retirement community, I am surrounded by folks who have all now “down-sized” to what is intended to be their Final Zip Code—which does not mean we are not Zippy or are expecting to Die soon.  We are just living in blessedly smaller-to-care-for spaces with fewer things to tend. (No gutters to clean—but also no basements—and smaller closets).  But we got here through some successful Badgering.

More in my turn to write next month on The Art of Parental Badgering