By Katelyn Amendolara-Russo
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – There are things in my home that would never make an insurance appraisal, yet I would be devastated to lose them.
An old photograph, handwritten recipe, a piece of furniture. A little figurine or holiday decoration that has followed my family through generations. The value isn’t measured in dollars; it’s measured in memories.
I think about that whenever I pull out my great-grandmother’s recipes, which were kept in a little tin box.
I have her recipes for cookies, kolache and homemade breads, written in her handwriting and preserved on pieces of her kitchen stationery that have clearly been used and loved. The measurements aren’t always as precise as the recipes we find online today. Some are more like instructions from someone who already knows what she’s doing: a little of this, enough of that, bake until it looks right!
And somehow, that makes them even more special.
When I read those recipes, I don’t think about food, but I think about her kitchen. I think about the generations of women who learned from her. I think about how a recipe can travel farther than the person who first wrote it.
Food is one of the ways we preserve family history without even realizing we’re doing it.
One of my favorite memories is my great-grandmother’s Orthodox Christmas. Her Christmas came after ours, following the calendar tradition observed by many Orthodox Christians. The difference in dates meant that, as children, we felt like we got to celebrate Christmas twice.
But her celebration had its own traditions.
There was always homemade bread on the table with a dime wrapped in foil hidden inside. All of the grandchildren would gather around and break pieces from the loaf, searching for the dime. Whoever found it was supposed to have good luck.
I don’t remember how many times someone found the dime. What I remember is the anticipation – the hands reaching for the bread, the excitement, the laughter and all of us gathered around the same table.
The dime was worth 10 cents and the memory is priceless.
I think that’s what happens to the things we keep. Their meaning changes over time.
As children, we don’t necessarily understand why our parents save certain photographs or why our grandmother insists on bringing out the same decoration every Christmas. We simply know that these things belong to our family.
Then we get older. The people who made those traditions are no longer here. The houses change and furniture gets replaced. The voices around the table become quieter and suddenly, the little things we once overlooked become some of the things we treasured most.
A photograph can bring back a face, a recipe can bring back a taste and a piece of furniture can remind us of the person who always sat in the same place.
A holiday ornament can take us back to a particular Christmas we haven’t thought about in years.
Working in a museum has made me especially aware of this. Every day, I see objects that have survived their original owners. We preserve paintings, sculptures and artifacts because they tell us something about who we were.
But we all have museums of our own. They are in our closets, kitchen drawers, attics and cabinets. They are filled with the things we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away.
A grandfather’s watch, a recipe box, a child’s first drawing or a Christmas ornament with a broken hook.
These objects may look ordinary, but to us, they are evidence of a life.
Maybe that is why I have become more sentimental about the things I keep as I’ve gotten older. I realize now that someday my children may open a drawer and find something that belonged to me. They may not understand why I saved it. I hope they ask. Because, eventually, the things we keep become part of someone else’s history.
And perhaps that is the greatest value of all – not that an object lasts forever, but that it gives someone a reason to remember. And our story can keep going.
