As I sit on the steps of my parents' house with my sister, we witness the end of an era. My parents are selling their home they built in 1948 and moving to an assisted living residence. We have the task of helping my mother sort through almost 60 years of memories. We are helping her decide what she has to part with, so she and Daddy can move on to the next journey of their lives.

        My mother is an admitted “pack rat,” and after the experience, I am thankful she is. Among the relics are the doll house my dad crafted for my sister, a hobby horse Dad made for me (Mother tells me the rockers came from my Aunt “Hun's” old rocking chair. I vaguely remember her.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dianne Hummerich, 55, is a hairdresser at Dillard's in Kenwood. She lives in Loveland with her husband Glenn. Her sister, Marilyn Marks, lives in Bethel. Her parents are Thelma and Wilbur Steward of Bethel.

        We also find a black velvet stuffed cat that my fraternal grandmother made for me. My mother reveals that she made it from her old coat. My sister and I laugh that it could have been the original “Beanie Baby.”

        There are a lot of vintage clothes, books and magazines. My grandmother's wedding dress, worn February 1916, and every greeting card Dad ever sent to my mother in all the years they have been together are there.

        I find a set of cards tied together congratulating Mother and Dad on my birth 55 years ago. The notes and handwritten greetings are priceless to me. In an old hosiery box, we find Mother's perfectly dried wedding bouquet. She tells us she picked the faded pink rosebuds from a friend's backyard on that special day in June 1939.

        Then we find an autograph book belonging to my great-great-aunt, Amanda Wolf. All the sentiments written to her with love, are inscribed in beautiful, perfectly written calligraphy. The first entry is dated Dec. 18, 1887.

        “Who is Amanda Wolf?” I asked my mother? She tells us she is my great-grandfather's sister. Then Mother finds her picture. We canalmost feel her spirit as we hold her book. What would she have thought if she could have known that we would read these beautiful verses 114 years after they were written to her?

        We spend hours going through hundreds of pictures of relatives who are long gone, and I realize my age. The pictures of my parents' courting years, where their love for each other pours from the images, make my sister and I cry.

        Downstairs I wrap the dishes that graced my mother's china cabinet for so many years. “They came on a sailing ship with my great-great-grandparents Jacob and Elizabeth, when they left from Germany in 1854, to come to Cincinnati,” my mother tells me.

        Now, I pass them in my china cabinet and can't believe they are in my home. Where will they go next? I'm the fourth generationto receive them, and two more generations have been born. I wonder who will treasure the china as I do now.

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