Heredity

Inventorying my parents’ estate a few years ago, I was disappointed to discover how far they’d strayed from the eclectic interior decorating aesthetic of my childhood. I’d grown up with shoji screens and hammered brass and Danish modern furniture and virtually all of it was gone. Gone and replaced. With resin gnomes. With Thomas Kinkade cottages and faux antique signage of the kind you’d expect to see nailed to the wall at a Cracker Barrel.

I remember sorting through the boxes wondering how I could be related to people who’d collect such things. Had they been in agreement, or had one abetted the other’s insanity?
Then, just yesterday, I caught myself impulse purchasing a four-inch-tall resin pug dog dressed in a banana suit.

Mortification.

Please understand that I know and value the difference between hand-knotted and hand-tufted wool rugs. When Stickley moved its furniture-making operations to Vietnam, I mourned. When I buy a table lamp, I have the sockets replaced with solid brass because brass-painted sockets irk me.

But what does any of that matter now? And how much less will it matter tomorrow when I buy the pug in a peapod suit?