Compilation Sunday: (that special time of week when picture and prose become as one)
Anytime one makes a trip to a museum, be it as spectacular as a National Smithsonian or as utterly uncelebrated as the North Platte Farm Equipment and Kitchen Utensil Museum, he would find the relics of history, those items which have survived the often harsh passage of time and have lived on to narrate the world of yesteryear to a planet often eager but more likely indifferent to see that era. When one is lucky, sometimes he doesn’t have to travel to a museum to hear the stories a particular artifact has to tell. Sometimes he can simply walk across the room and pick up the artifact and carefully imagine the scenes it’s seen and even hear the anecdotes it’s bursting to tell.
Such is the case with the mug pictured in today’s post. The three handled glass shaving mug has stood the test of time for at least half a century. It belonged to my grandfather, my mom’s dad, and as far as I know, he used it for most of his adult life to scrape clean the whiskers from his weathered face and smoothen the cheeks that would kiss my mom before she left for school every morning.
Not daily, but every so often, I’ll stand in front of the mirror, fill the sink with warm water and get out the old-fashioned brush and cake of soap and take a trip back in time. I lather up my face and razor it smooth as glass and can’t help but reflect on the stories that this mug must be filled with. Perhaps every man has a certain longing or affinity for the past, a reverence for the old ways of doing things, and a desire to walk in the footsteps of those who walked before him. One of my favorite authors, Gary Schmidt, still clicks out his novels on a typewriter. A neighbor down the street still cuts his grass with a non-electronic push mower. There’s a certain lure the past has, a mysterious power to draw men to it. Whenever I use the mug and brush, without fail I ponder my Grandpa and wonder about what this mug might have seen.
Perhaps my grandpa would take down his shaving mug and lather up his face early in the morning before gathering around the large table with my grandma and my mom and her eight brothers and sisters.
I wonder if my grandpa would stand erect and tall in his bathroom and soap up his face and start to shave just as my mom would happen to run into his room and catch him in the midst of it all. Did my grandpa take a little puff of soap and dab it on my mom’s nose and playfully laugh at her? Did my mom, just barely learning to walk, wrap her arms and legs around my grandpa’s leg as he took the razor to his face?
On Saturday nights did my grandpa take out the mug and clean himself up before herding the entire crew into the wagon the next day to head to church? Has the mug been privy to a few generations of faith, handed down from decade to decade?
I wonder about the historic days in which this mug has played a role. Did my grandpa use the mug the day the stock market crashed? Did he pull it off the shelf the night that victory was finally declared in
The questions seem to unravel in my mind as I contemplate this mug and history. And while looking at history involves being firmly glued to the rearview mirror, one can’t help but look out and scan the future horizons when thinking about history. I wonder if my son or my grandson will have this mug situated in a prominent place in his bathroom and think of me fondly and inquisitively in the decades to come.
I hope so, and I hope the trip backwards in time is a pleasant one filled with happy memories made along the narrow highway of faith.
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