My Grandmother’s Table
Nancy Lasher 

This is my grandmother's table. It’s actually my grandparents’ table,  but I’ve always just called it my grandmother’s table. I remember many a meal at this table. It was set with Fiestaware. My sisters and I would love to set the table, matching and mismatching the bright dishes, and fighting over who would get the one cobalt blue plate. This was the table where we sat summer mornings, and had a choice of Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes. This is where my sisters and I got to curl my grandfather’s long silver hair. This became the “diner” where we “played waitress,” and got paid to serve my grandfather the food my grandmother cooked. When my grandmother closed up her house, my mother and her sister and all the grandkids got to choose a few items we wanted. My sisters got the Fiestaware, but I got the table. 
 
My grandmother’s table has been well used since and created many more memories. It was spread with the jigsaw puzzle that I did late night after being woken up to nurse my firstborn. It survived those endless wipings after two toddlers eating like, well, toddlers, eliminating the beautiful well-burnished orange finish. It hosted many a family dinner, Passovers, and Christmas celebrations. I’ve come home many a night to find my kids and their friends crowded around it – eating, playing board games, leaving watermarks on it. And I’ve found the remnants of beer pong and have to smile. It was most recently used by my daughter to host a 19th birthday party. 

The Family Dollhouse
Roslyn Bernstein

My father was a lawyer by profession and a carpenter by avocation —he built cabinets that were not quite straight, and shelves that leaned in one direction or another. Before the birth of his first grandchild, he began a new project: a homemade dollhouse, covered in shingles made of cardboard, with wooden room dividers. It had a wonderful wooden front door with a leather strap for a handle and a high-pitched roof.  
 
On the main floor there was an entrance hall and two rooms— a parlor and a kitchen. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. Sadly, though, he never got to finish it. One month after his first grandchild was born (a boy), my father was killed by a drunk driver while crossing the street in front of our family home. What happened next is the story of family and of generations. I discovered the dollhouse in the attic some years later and began finishing it for the arrival of my first child, my daughter, Julia, who was born in 1970. She played with it endlessly, making pictures to hang on its walls, and folding tiny notebooks with strange letters to put on the bookshelves. Everyone who came by added something: a tiny flower pot, a tea kettle, a chess set, and a rocking chair. 

Somehow, this year, in this lonely time of Covid, this dollhouse reconnected me with everyone who ever worked or played there. 

The Old for the New
Rebecca Skoff 

About 10 years ago, we had to move my Grandma from her Bronx apartment to a nursing home. I was asked what items I might want to take to remember all of the holidays, winter breaks, and family meals in that small but lively home, and I immediately chose a Passover seder plate. I remembered Grandma telling me it had been bought by my Great Grandfather, during his one and only visit to Israel. I promptly put it in a box, where it sat for a decade. In April 2020, a month into the pandemic, I found myself frantically trying to figure out how to have a quarantine seder, and make it meaningful, and not sad. I remembered that in a box in my basement, sat a plate from the past. I liberated it, scrubbed it, shined it, and poured boiling water on it. The ancient words and drawings on the plate speak of freedom, and as I placed it in the center of our table, over my son's drawings of the Hebrew slaves crossing the sea, I wondered at its journey across oceans and time. The old plate had new life, and though my family has been far away for two years of Passovers now, their story was with us. It took a modern-day plague for me to properly honor it, but now five generations have celebrated this holiday with this sacred object. What stories will it tell next?

Egyptian Papyrus Scene
Karen Coughlin

My mother worked professionally in the art field (children's book illustration and textiles). When she retired, she made very unusual and creative objects in her spare time.

For this one, she got the idea after visiting the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian section.  She rolled up small pieces of different color art paper, made a papyrus water scene, then framed it like a painting. I love the piece — it is priceless to me and I treasure it.