Dancing Decanter

I have my Nana’s decanter. The one with the little glass insert of the waltzing man and lady. When you wind it up, the dancers whirl around in their glass dome to the music box sounds. The decanter is as old as I can remember. It sat on the glass china cabinet in her lounge room, next to the African violets and the ceramic ashtray of an African boy holding open a crocodile’s mouth. The gauze curtains always waved in the breeze behind it. The windows always looked out into her front garden.

It was always there, always in the same place. Every time we visited as children I would stare at it and wonder how the little dolls got inside it. It usually had some liquid around it, maybe sherry, maybe scotch. I don’t really know and I didn’t care. All I could see were the dancers. I sat in front of it for hours, just staring at it and loving it. Nana would wind it up and play it for me and I don’t think I had ever seen anything more beautiful in my life.

As I grew the decanter never moved. It was reassuring how it was always in the same place. As reassuring as knowing my Nana was always in the same place when I visited her. When my children were born they also saw the decanter and very occasionally they heard it play. But they weren’t that interested in it. During the 80′s and 90′s there were more things to amuse than an old fashioned bottle with wind up dolls inside.

I visited my Nana one day when things were not going my way at all. Life was pretty awful actually and I knew she was the only person who could talk to me, advise me and comfort me. We sat together for a long time and talked and I felt her wisdom, her love and I gave her my gratitude. The decanter was there, as it always had been, keeping watch. When she passed away, with myself and other family members by her side, I felt my world collapse. Gone was my rock, my idol, my comfort. I didn’t think I could go on without her.

The decanter became mine and I took it to my home. I can’t describe how I felt when I held it and wound it up to watch the dancers perform their timeless waltz. My childhood came flooding back, my growing years, my adult life and through it all was the warmth of my Nana’s love and the constancy of her…. and the decanter. The decanter now sits on a shelf in my house and it sits quietly most of the time. I say most of the time because there are times when I wind it and watch the dancers but I always cry for what has gone and can’t be replaced so I don’t do it very often.

But the decanter isn’t quiet all the time. It has played a few bars by itself more than once. It played on the day of both my daughter’s weddings. It played on the day of the birth of each of my grandchildren. I didn’t wind it then. I didn’t touch it. But it played. This decanter is a tangible link to the past spanning 4 generations now. It is history. It is the present. It is the future.

Don’t neglect these things when you write your family history. They are inanimate but they are important. They don’t pass away. They keep the past alive. They were part of your ancestors world.