A few months ago, I inherited two toolboxes that had belonged to my Zaida (grandfather), after my Bubba (grandmother) passed away. It's been a bit busy around these parts, so I only last week got a chance to sit down and sort through them and decide what I wanted to keep, and what I could pass along. I thought I'd sit down with my camera for the process, as it felt a bit like opening a time capsule. I doubt that anyone has looked in the toolboxes much in the nearly 10 years since he passed away, and they were certainly filled nearly beyond capacity with stuff. It took a bit of negotiating to get everything to fit back in there! My Zaida was a very, very handy man, and so his toolboxes are an extension of what I remember most about him.
It's funny, the things you can learn by going through someone's belongings that they never expected anyone else to pay attention to or even to ever see. How they keep things organized (or not). The things they can't see fit to throw away, even if a use for them doesn't seem apparent. That someone kept dropping Bubba's nice dishes, enough to justify 3 tubes of china-weld. Little scraps of paper, pencils sharpened with a knife, and more loose screws than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I like to think that I'll have a piece of him with me on all the future projects I use these tools for.
--Erin
Aw, I love that you call them Bubba and Zaide. My grandparents were so happy when my three year old picked those names up for them.
ReplyDeleteAs a child of divorced parents, I had an abnormal abundance of grandparents as a kid! I had a Bubba and Zaida, a Grandma and Grandpa, and a Bubbie and Zaide. Also briefly a Nana and Poppa. The whole using their first name and Bubba etc as a title was so not their bag, so they all had to be easy to differentiate in conversation, birthday cards, etc :P
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