Keiler Roberts
Sometime in the ‘90s my grandpa built 18 giant jewelry boxes - enough for every woman in three generations of our family (plus one extra) and made simple hinged rectangular boxes for the men for whatever they have instead of jewelry. Drill bits and fishing lures? After a few divorces and my grandma’s death there were extra boxes, so Mom and I each have two. When I told her I was writing about Grandpa’s jewelry box, she said, “Those were supposed to be able to store all our jewelry, but I filled up both boxes. They’re so big, you can’t fit them anywhere.” The box is too big to put anywhere, but is too small for all her jewelry.
My grandpa (George Weber) owned a print shop in Milwaukee. Sometimes he would give us unusual paper, which I coveted as much as the handmade Barbie clothes my grandma bought for me at craft fairs. She was a shopper who would show up with a cake in a bakery box and joke that she spent all day making it. I’m a shopper and a maker and a hand-me-down seeker.
During the last year of his life, Grandpa put together a slide show for his retirement home friends with all his projects. In addition to woodworking, he developed his own black and white and color photographs in his basement dark room. He drove all over Wisconsin to photograph “painted ladies,” which sounds like a euphemism for sex workers, but is the nickname for Victorian houses. He sewed leather moccasins, built guitars, and made stained-glass windows.
He had special glue from his print shop to bind note pads. His last batch of scratch pads were made of years of emails he’d printed and accumulated. He gave them to my mom, and she asked me if I wanted one. The emails were cut in half, but you could still read enough to learn something scandalous. I saw one from my sister and another from a cousin. To me, it was personal just to know who had corresponded much with him. I threw them all out to protect everyone’s privacy. My sister found out and was furious. I had no right to destroy a family heirloom. She hadn’t saved her old emails and had no qualms about reading others.’ She has a different perspective on sharing. I felt like I’d done the ethical thing, but now I kind of wish I could read them.