Only The Caretaker

I clutched the tiny leather case close to my heart yesterday for more than an hour, my fingers tracing the cracks in the aged red leather. Placing it on my lap, I gently pulled the snap to open the case, careful not to tear the leather. The contents fairly glowed in the morning sun … twenty eight dominoes. When I was a tiny girl, those dominoes were creamy white, but age had turned them to a color somewhere between honey and amber. Gently fondling each domino, I felt their power flow through me. My mind’s eye conjured an image of the fingers that once held these. Those fingers, as did these dominoes, belonged to my Granddaddy Duncan … the hero of my youth.

“Precioussss,” I sighed.

Y’all, that’s when I snapped out of my reverie and closed that case! Suddenly, I reminded myself of Gollum in Tolkien’s The Hobbit and his later Lord of The Rings Trilogy. Remember Gollum? Supposedly he started as a normal person, but the power of his greed for The Ring turned him into a twisted caricature of a man. I knew it was time for these dominoes to be passed on to other hands, because I don’t want to end up looking like Gollum!

I’ve always known that I was only the “caretaker” for the family heirlooms. I knew that one day they would be given to the next generation. Yesterday, those dominoes did pass to other hands, and I didn’t feel a twinge of remorse.

In good hands

Tyrone and Ted flank me. I'm the one in the middle!

I had the great pleasure of meeting two of my cousins yesterday. Actually, those handsome young men are the offspring of my first cousin. I remembered Ted when he was a toddler, but couldn’t remember meeting Tyrone. He claims we did meet when he was young, but I don’t recall it. One of us has a memory problem, and I’m not going to admit to it. It doesn’t matter, I instantly felt the bond of our kinship.

Tyrone, who is tracing our family history, is visiting from France. Because he has lived abroad for more than a decade he speaks with a French accent. Ted talks with an accent that sounds more like me than I do. Both were interested in hearing me tell them tales of our family … of kinfolk they had never met.

I had taken an assortment of our family relics to show them, for somehow just touching these items once owned by our ancestors is a powerful connection. They didn’t know I had planned to give them some of these treasures.

You see, they don’t have any of the family relics. Their parents divorced when they were young, and they never had strong ties to the Duncan clan. I hope that I can change that by giving them some connection — family heirlooms that are a tangible link to the past.

To Ted, I gave a delicate wooden pencil box, with Japanese style painting on the face of it, that had belonged to my Grandmommy Duncan. It had fascinated me as a child, and was one of my prized possessions. I could tell from the look on his face that it pleased him.

Tyrone, however, was the one to receive the dominoes. He had been given the middle name “Andrew,” after my grandfather, at birth. In his teens, he had changed both his middle name and his last name … so there were no remainders of his ties to “my clan.” After telling him of his great-grandfather, I gently chided him about that name change. “I didn’t know anything about him,” he said. “I wish I had talked to you before that.”

You can change your name, my friends, but that doesn’t change who you are. Those dominoes are once again in the hands of “Andrew Duncan.” I think that’s where they belong. I just hope that my cousin doesn’t feel the power of those dominoes as I did. After all, he is only the caretaker.

Tyrone was concerned that perhaps I wasn’t quite “ready” to give them to him. He worried that I would miss them and promised that if I did, I could visit them in Paris.

In Paris???

Katy bar the door! I think I miss those dominoes already. Where is my suitcase?

“Precioussss!”

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. No Strings Attached
2. Only The Good Friday
3. Charge!
4. Haunted House in Black and White
5. Ominous

Tagged as: dominoes, family, Memories