Material #5: Family ties

At a two-day convening I was a part of, the facilitator Kriz Gomez asked everyone to bring an object that means something to them. At times through those two days, participants introduced their objects. They included a medal from a half-marathon, an elephant carved from stone, a map, and the stories that came with them were more emotional and spiritual than an emphasis on “objects” might initially suggest.  

Material objects can be stepping stones, across time, memories, emotions. Something that indigenous cultures recognize and respect perhaps far more clearly then Western cultures, despite the latter’s apparent fixation with material goods.

Recently I felt overcome by sadness that we had given my mom’s bright pink coat to the second-hand store, after she passed away and my sister and I were organizing her things. Despite that being about six years ago, I asked my husband, rhetorically and seemingly out of the blue, “Why didn’t we keep her pink coat?!!”. Of course it wasn’t the coat I was upset about, it was that I could remember how she looked and felt in it so clearly, and that she’s no longer here to wear it. My hope is that someone found it and is wearing it in their own wonderful way.

When we’re cooking, we often use a saucepan that my husband’s mother had used, which is a matte silver color and covered with tiny dents, and makes a particular sound when you stir and scrape it: it doesn’t exactly bring his mother closer, but there is a connection, a bridge.

In “The Ties that Bind: Materiality, Identity, and the Life Course in the ‘Things’ Families Keep”, the authors argue for an “objects from below” and “archives from below” approach to history and archiving: an approach which “engages with material culture and the archival practices of individuals and families”.

They quote the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk who said in his “Modest Manifesto for Museums” that the “future of museums is in our own homes”, and in small museums set in neighborhoods. This only reinforces the importance in new building plans and projects - particularly as so many homes are increasingly fragile and temporary - to engage deeply with what is already there in a place, not only what is to come.

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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.