Dispossession
Dec 21, 2024
I ran my fingers across a white dinner plate with a Royal Blue garland looping around the broad rim. Little braille-like bumps between the garland’s loops slowed my hand as I examined the design. It was one of a set of six plates sitting on a shelf in AXS Design, a shop well worth seeking out. The two-room store sits at the back of a small courtyard off rue Saint Sabin in the 11th arrondissement. The owners specialize in vintage dinnerware, cutlery, and linen, laid out around the rooms amid other curious pieces.1
It looked to me like a good place to launch a new phase in life, one guided by restraint. My new motto: less crap. The plate in my hands represented a challenge. In my new small apartment, where cupboard space is at a premium, did I really want them? Could I visualize them on my dining table with the pale pink fleecy upholstered chairs (not of my choosing)? Bright blue, pale pink. I wasn’t sure. The dishes were a little more formal than I imagined my table looking when set for dinner. Still, they were pretty…
“Do you know those plates are actually ironware?” A slender man with a well-trimmed beard, on the younger side of middle aged, wore John Lennon glasses, a red plaid flannel shirt-jacket, off-white chino pants, and a baseball cap with no logo. He gently took the plate from me and turned it over to show me the maker’s mark on the back that read, “Made in France” in English. “This tells you it was made for export,” said Sydney Sabatier, one of two co-owners of the shop. We chatted in English about the dinnerware on display, local markets, renting in France, l’étrenne (the holiday tip he recommended I give my building’s concierge), and towns in Brittany, before we circled back to dishes. I said I hoped one day find rustic ceramic bakeware in the city. “Hmm, difficult. You have to go to the countryside. But!”
He did an about-face and squatted in front of a low shelf to hunt for something. He pulled out a pile of four small stoneware bowls. The largest was about six inches high and wide. The sides tapered and the rim had a pouring lip on one side, a small batter bowl. Perfect for one person or two. I was enchanted. My instincts as a fierce bargainer came to the fore. “I’ll take them all. How much?” Imagine my relief when Sydney named a price for all four that I feared I’d have to pay for the batter bowl alone.2 If the courtyard’s cobblestones hadn’t been so slick and uneven - it rained just minutes before - I would have had a bounce in my step when I left with my first purchase attractively wrapped. I knew I’d get to know this shop well.
I arrived Paris with very few possessions. In the six months before I left California, I embarked on cleaning my slate and starting over. I carried box after box of my books to the Friends of the Public Library. I gave up my beloved Breville counter-top smart oven. I carried the Le Creuset pots I’d owned for years to the houses of bewildered friends, who could not understand why I was giving up such precious pieces of kitchenware. Bags and bags of clothes I never wore went to GoodWill. Right before I left, I sold my car and canceled my car insurance.
The hardest decision had to do with the photographs of my life and my family’s lives. My sister didn’t want them. Nor did my cousins. My predicament hinges on the fact that my sister, two cousins, and I are the end of the line. None of us have children. We four see with a clarity absent in many of my friends that the things we hang on to for reasons of obstinant sentimentality or as heirlooms for the next generation will turn into a mess that someone else will have to clean up when we exit the scene. It is very likely that the next generation will be uninterested in most of what we leave behind. Including photographs.
As I thought about what things to relieve myself of, it occurred to me that I hadn’t looked at my old photos in years, just as I hadn’t worn many of the clothes I gave away or cooked in some of the pots that are now in the cupboards of friends. My attachment to the photos felt more existential than sentimental. Who would I be without visual evidence of my past? Would the photos ever serve a dispositive purpose? I couldn’t see how, unless arguing with my sister over some detail in them counts. Did I need photographic proof to remind myself of the many happy times in my life? Not really. Given that I opened my box of photographs about once every ten years, their value seemed to lie in the security of their existence more than in the visual information I found in them.
The dilemma was compounded by my profession. I am an historian, albeit retired. Destroying archives — even my own — violates my deeply-held belief in the future. No one will write my biography. Still, it is conceivable that photographs, letters, and journals produced by nobodies like me could one day contribute to research for a social history, a collective biography of some kind, or even art. How do we know what not to throw out when we’re not sure what scholars and artists of the future will find useful? My solution to these conundrums was to digitize all the photos I had, dating back to early 1900s, and store them in three different clouds. It was a tedious chore, but I’m glad I did it.
Friends with children face the same questions I did. Even many people with children lack someone who is interested in what they leave behind. I have friends whose children have made it clear they have no interest in what their parents optimistically hope they will someday view as “retro,” if not intrisically valuable. With the collapse of the market in wood antiques (“brown furniture,” “posh wood”), kids today do not want to be saddled with their parents’ stuff.3
In the end, I asked myself, why not shake off the clutter and lighten my load? Once I realized how many attractively furnished and fairly affordable apartments there are for rent in Paris, the solution was clear. I would start over. Now I’m prepared to limit my sentimental attachments to far fewer, carefully chosen things. In the same spirit that many people now prefer to give experiences as gifts, rather than material goods, I reconfigured my inclination to nest into a desire to explore more of Europe with my dog. In the coming years, I plan to travel by train as often as I can afford it. Moving here with a minimum of goods also avoids a tussle with French customs over bringing my possessions into the country. What I am bringing into France fits into two big and two small suitcases, in addition to two medium-sized boxes. Thus far, I am here with one big suitcase. The rest will come later. First, I have to obtain the visa. Then, when the things I’ve chosen to keep finally arrive here, I will feel like old friends have shown up at my door.
1 Because I’m not sure how old most of the goods for sale in the store are, I’m going with “vintage” - meaning at least twenty-five years old - rather than “antique.”
2 Actually, I never bargain. I take it or leave it.
3 https://www.joshuakennon.com/antique-furniture-prices-have-collapsed/