Baseball Cards and Candlesticks

This past summer I moved to a new residence. The whole process of packing, moving, and

unpacking is a horrendous experience. I think one of the devil’s torture treatments will be commanding the citizens of hell to repeatedly move to a new home. As soon as you get settled, he orders you to move again. It’ll be an eternal game of musical chairs, only without enough U-Haul trucks.

I’ve had a semi-nomadic life over the years with more than 20 different addresses since leaving Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI as a newborn. Every move over the last 30 years has involved toting several plastic storage tubs from house to house. From baseball cards to newspapers, I’ve been saving things since my youth. Occasionally, I still buy an LA Times when something monumental happens, like the Cubs winning the World Series. But mostly, the tubs have sat unopened, like buried time capsules, stacked in the back of each new garage. 

I can’t remember the last time I looked at what’s inside the tubs. So when I moved this summer, I decided to crack the lids and peer inside. I felt like an archaeologist opening the lost Ark.

Just call me Indiana Tones.

The items in the tubs brought back fond memories. For example, two boxes of baseball cards instantly had me retracing my steps along the Michigan country roads to the local general store. I remember having to step into the roadside ditch to avoid the hurricane-force winds produced by speeding trucks carrying grain or hay to the nearby dairy farm. 

A stack of college newspapers recalled the semesters of writing in a basement newsroom as a sports writer and editor for the Long Beach State Daily 49er. Additionally, I laughed at the massive volume of newspapers and Sports Illustrated magazines in the tubs. Years before the Internet, I somehow felt the need to preserve every important sports moment from being lost forever. 

I expected to see some of the items in the tubs because, well, I put them there. But others were precious discoveries of objects long forgotten. A fifth-grade autobiography told me that my life as a writer began long before my university days. Pecked out on a typewriter and covered with a piece of wallpaper it correctly predicted that I’d live in California. I missed on the forecast of becoming a professional baseball player however. 

Rediscovering a scrapbook from the 1984 Detroit Tigers Championship season felt like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls. “Bless You Boys” bumper stickers covered a cheap photo album, holding Scotch-taped box scores and summaries from every game of that magical season. 

A carton of High School graduation mementos carried me through the halls of my alma matre. It contained my cap (no gown), a VHS of the ceremony, and a few grad photos highlighting my 80s light-bulb-shaped hairstyle. I discovered a senior class group photo taken on Daytona Beach in the spring of 1986. I was able to share it on our class Facebook page, provoking threads of comments and questions for days.

A trio of baseball gloves chronicled my days fielding grounders and catching fly balls on the rocky Michigan diamonds from T-ball to High School. They whisked me back to the 70s and playing catch with my dad, honing my fastball together after he came home from work. 

 

Family heirlooms of both the Durbin and Gervase variety brought a smile. A photocopied scrapbook that my cousin made for grandma Ruby sat next to a pair of oval paintings that grandma Rose bequeathed to me in 1983. But mixed in with the little league trophies, autographed baseballs, press passes, and media guides, sat an unfamiliar shoebox.

 

“What’s in here?” I wondered to myself.

Inside, wrapped in white tissue paper, were the two oldest occupants of my treasure chests: a pair of silver candlesticks. I have no memory of receiving them, but instantly remembered they also came from Grandma Rose. I quickly fired off some texts to my dad. He wasn’t sure how old they were, but he didn’t think they came from the old country. He said they belonged to his grandmother.

“She had nearly two dozen grandchildren, why did I get them?”

“I think she wanted you to have something to remember her by,” he typed back.

Yes, but why me? This is a little funny. I didn’t know my grandma very well. She always lived states away and visits were only once a year, if that.

To me, it was like stumbling upon the Holy Grail. I was holding two items that far outdated my 51 years. Remorseful, I wondered why I had hidden them in the plastic tubs and why hadn’t I opened them sooner. I’m sure they were packed in haste, maybe when I left Michigan. Perhaps all those years ago I figured that I set them up above the fireplace, when I had a mantle of my own. But somehow I’d forgotten them.

Like my baseball cards, I wonder what stories those candlesticks hold. Stories of Sunday pasta dinners and of my grandma baking cookies and folding ravioli in the kitchen. What memories did those candlesticks evoke in her? And what did she see in me to find me worthy of such a gift?

I don’t put many things in the tubs anymore. Memories are now saved in photos on my phone or on social media sites. I guess my inner Marie Kondo is more focused on decluttering. 

In my new house, the candlesticks have finally emerged from their garage-style exile and have taken up residence on a living room side table. I think they represent all the good things that this house holds: the love of a beautiful wife and the harmony we share together.

Blessings of peace. 

Gifts of joy. 

Treasures of hope.

They remind me that both my nomadic life and years of living alone are over. They tell me that God’s grace is quite amazing and that a new life and new beginnings are possible. I’ll never find out what those candlesticks meant to my grandmother, but I think she’d be happy to know how much they now mean to me.