My husband and I are starting to think about what to hang on the walls in our new house.
Before we moved, our daughter told me, “Mother, if you don’t hang your pictures within a week after you move, you’ll never do it.”
I disagreed with her then, and I still do. I wanted to get the feel of the house before we started putting holes in the newly painted walls.
Some of our artwork both my husband and I like. Other pieces, only one of us cares for. We have to decide what compromises we will make, and who gets veto power in which rooms.
And some things we just need to declare don’t work in our new home. We had pieces like that in our old house, and, because this house has fewer rooms, we will have more unworkable pieces.
Mrs. Birdsong’s bell pull
One of those things is Mrs. Birdsong’s bell pull.
Mrs. Birdsong was my grandmother’s neighbor when Nanny Winnie lived in Richland in the mid-1970s after my step-grandfather died. Mrs. Birdsong was a widow, and she and Nanny Winnie used to go places together. I think Mrs. Birdsong had a car, which my grandmother did not, so Mrs. Birdsong provided the transportation on their outings.
“MB 74” detail
At some point, Mrs. Birdsong gave Nanny Winnie a bell pull she had cross-stitched. At the bottom there is a small stitching “MB 74.” Mrs. Birdsong’s name was Mabel (though I never called her that), and I assume she gave the bell pull to my grandmother in 1974 or 1975.
I remember it hanging in my grandmother’s apartment in Richland, as well as in a later apartment she had in Seattle.
I don’t recall how long Nanny Winnie kept it, but at some point after I moved into our last house in 1984, my mother brought it to me. “You should have this,” Mother said. “You remember Mrs. Birdsong, don’t you?”
Well, I remembered her vaguely. I had been a senior in high school when Nanny Winnie moved to Richland and headed off to college a few months later, so I didn’t spend a lot of time with Nanny Winnie and her friends. I remembered the bell pull better than I remembered the woman who made it. I knew Mrs. Birdsong had been an elementary school teacher, because one of my high-school friends told me Mrs. Birdsong had been her teacher in an early grade.
But I liked the bell pull because it had been my grandmother’s, and Nanny Winnie had liked it.
Bell pull in our old house
I debated as I was decluttering our old house whether to keep the bell pull. I left it on the wall as we showed our house, because I was afraid the marks on the wall under the bell might detract from our home’s presentation. But once the house sold, did I really want the bell pull?
Oh, well. It was small. I packed it.
But now it is time to make a decision. Do I want to keep the bell pull?
Not really. As I said, I don’t remember Mrs. Birdsong, and I liked the bell pull only because it was my grandmother’s. I could hang it in a corner somewhere, but I don’t really need it.
So I took these pictures of it and put it in the box to give away. I know a good thrift shop that will find it a home.
How do you make decisions about what to get rid of?
