Wednesday Wishes

I wish I would have kept __________ (fill in the blank). I wonder where __________ (fill in the blank). If only I had kept __________ (fill in the blank). I wish I knew . . . you get the picture.

How many times have you asked yourself questions like these? Or how about this scenario: you are perusing an antique store. You spot something you recall your aunt had, or maybe your grandmother used. Suddenly, you are in the room with your aunt watching her try on a new hat she just bought. Or you are in the kitchen with your grandmother and she hands you that heavy rolling pin and instructs you to roll out the pie dough.  Should of, would of, could of.  

These are the wishes I am purporting today. The fill-in-the-blank examples are here to give you the model for setting up an outline that will help you create a list of items you may want to buy to start or add to your museum.

For example: my father loved to thumb through the 971 page (1966 issue) or more of both the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. I can remember him sitting at the kitchen table, the radio playing softly in the background, and a cup of coffee getting cold as he got engrossed in the catalog, particularly the tools. Dad couldn’t have enough tools! And if it wasn’t for my perspicacious and astute daughter, who at the young age of 12, spotted these musty, rag-tagged catalogs in my parents’ attic and saved them. I certainly was not as perceptive as she was at that age. Probably because there were so many of these humongous catalogs around the house, I could care less about preserving them. But as time went by and these behemoth tomes eventually became obsolete, whatever remains of these once cherished books is all there is now and forever. So when I find one, I thumb through it and wish I was back at the kitchen table watching my father dream.  .  . of tools.   

 

I wish I had even just one more picture of my nana and nonno. But this is the only one I have. Elisabetha and Anthony immigrated from Italy in the 1890s’, traveling in steerage on one of the hundreds of ships that set sail from ports of Italy, arriving at Ellis Island and other ports-of-call in the United States. Settling in Chicago, nonno work on the railroad and nana ran a grocery       store. They raised 13 children, several went to college and became teachers, one served in WWI, and one was a big-band leader. Not bad for coming to America with a few bags and trunks. So I cherish this picture and a few more found through the years that I will share with you when I post about our Grandparents Museum.

So what are your Wednesday wishes? As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”