Heirlooms

I’ve often talked about the importance of using heirlooms and not just letting them gather dust and be “hands off.” I really, REALLY think this is important. You won’t feel connected to the people who used these things if the items are kept like museum pieces. And yes, that means things may get broken or lost – and when that happens, it’s sad for a moment.

Things can be replaced. But sometimes it takes a while.

Come closer to hear the tale . . .

Once upon a time, I was young and deeply unsure of myself. I tried to cover these insecurities, but I was a long way away from being willing to do the work that I needed to do to figure myself out. (By the way, that’s okay. We’re all works in progress and hardly anyone really truly knows what they’re doing.) At the time, I spent a lot of time with various backstage types – costumers, propmasters, set designers, and so on – who were all at least a few years older than I was. Theatre is, of course, professional make-believe, and live theatre is incredibly labor intensive – no one is using CGI to figure out the drape of a gown or the angle of the lighting. These people worked hard and played harder.

One show (that became a holiday standard for this particular theatre) was a non-musical version of The Nutcracker. It featured, of course, an epic battle between the Mouse King and the Nutcracker Prince. At the opening night party, one of the prop crew I was friendly with (named Abe) wore an eye-catching mouse pin on his lapel – it was enameled malachite green and cobalt blue, with rhinestone eyes and a gold-colored movable tail. I LOVED it at first sight. You need to understand that Abe was the first openly gay man I knew. He gave extravagant compliments and dressed with self-assurance. He knew art and fashion and architecture and music and didn’t lord that over anyone. He had done the work and knew what (and who) he liked and what (and who) he didn’t and made no apologies for any of that. Essentially, he spent his days fully being Abe. He was very kind to me in a muddled season of my life. And that night, he took the lapel pin off his coat and pinned it on my dress.

It was so much more than a pin.

A year or so later, I moved to Baltimore and we lost touch, as even good friends can do.

I heard through the grapevine a few years later (this was before the internet, you must remember) that Abe had contracted AIDS and passed away. We forget how awful that scourge was – and it hit the arts communities especially hard – not because there are inherently more “rainbow folk” in that field, but because it has always been so much more accepted. I mourned my friend and that little mouse made him feel closer.

Then one day, I realized I’d misplaced the pin. It felt like a betrayal. I still don’t know what happened to it – maybe it was in a pocket of a purse or a skirt I gave away. Over the years, I’d look for the pin online, but I never found it. It was very distinctive and nothing else would do. I didn’t want a mouse pin, I wanted THAT mouse pin.

Ten days ago, it popped up on eBay. Malachite green and cobalt blue, rhinestone eyes, goldtone movable tail. A little search showed that it’s probably a pin manufactured for the Avon company, so it was likely secondhand when Abe found it to wear on his lapel that night. It was priced at $12.99 and I couldn’t buy it fast enough.

I’ve been haunting the “track your order” feature and it arrived today.

It’s a throwaway trinket in terms of cost. And it’s amazingly dear to me.

His name was Abe. He was my friend, and I miss him.

And I shall guard that mouse closely.