Here Comes Treble: Treasures Of Our Past
...Holding this treasure-box carefully, I clambered down and put it on the kitchen counter to examine the contents. There was a tiny Coca-a-Cola bottle, reminder of the fact that at one time I drank gallons of that beverage. I smiled and turned over a few other items that no longer held any interest for me. Then, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, I found my tiny china Eskimo...
Isabel Bradley is reminded of bygone days.
While cleaning out the pantry recently, I stood on a dining-room chair to access the top shelf. There was the long-forgotten plastic tub filled with miniature ornaments which had, in a previous life it seemed, adorned a printer’s tray in the entrance hall of my home. Holding this treasure-box carefully, I clambered down and put it on the kitchen counter to examine the contents.
There was a tiny Coca-a-Cola bottle, reminder of the fact that at one time I drank gallons of that beverage. I smiled and turned over a few other items that no longer held any interest for me. Then, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, I found my tiny china Eskimo.
The Eskimo people consist of several cultural groups inhabiting the northern Polar regions of Siberia, Alaska, and Greenland. In Canada, the ‘aboriginal Canadians’ consider the term ‘Eskimo’ to be derogatory and are officially recognized as Inuit, while in Alaska, the term is still used to refer to both the Yupik and the Inupiat people.
When I was a little girl however, all the people who lived near the North Pole, who wore inside-out fur clothing and fished for their food through holes in the ice, were known as Eskimos.
At the sight of my tiny porcelain friend, a lump formed in my throat and memories flooded through me. His clothes were blue, his head hooded and his round face framed with white fur. In his hands, he held a tiny fish. He was an Eskimo with a history.
When I was a child of about nine or ten, I started collecting dolls dressed in national costumes. Gran gave me an Eskimo, dressed in blue, with a fur ruff around his round face and a fish clutched in front of him. He was larger but otherwise identical to, my china miniature, except that he was made of chocolate.
Though I was very fussy about food as a child, I was normal when it came to chocolate. Nothing has changed in the intervening years. After many months of preserving my beloved chocolate Eskimo in the fridge, I finally gave in to temptation and – yes – I ate him! Then, I sobbed because he
was gone.
Mom tried to re-create him by filling the coloured tin-foil wrapper with cotton-wool, but it was an impossible task. He bulged in all the wrong places, and just didn’t look right.
Many years later, when printers' trays were all the rage for hanging on walls and filling with tiny nick-knacks, I acquired a large one. It hung in the entrance hall of our home. Imagine how touched I was when Mom gave me the tiny, china replica of my chocolate Eskimo to display in my tray. After all those years, she’d found a way to heal my self-inflicted pain.
Thank goodness I have mementoes to stimulate memory. For this reason, many of us collect and display bibelots, or nick-knacks if you prefer the term, ornaments and souvenirs to help us re-live special moments and remember the people who shared them with us.
Previously, I’ve written of how little significance physical items truly have in the bigger picture of our lives. With exceptions, a bed, a table or a chair, is, after all, just a piece of furniture that can be replaced.
When it comes to the small things in life, we can all be grateful for those items we possess which remind us of the journey our lives have taken.
Until next time… ‘here comes Treble!’
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By Isabel Bradley
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