Friday Fodder – Adulting

While her neck is not anything worth drawing attention to, I would argue that anything covering the neck has been desperately needed for quite some time. In any case, she always liked that necklace so I am happy for her to receive it. And now that my daughter’s inheritance is accounted for, let’s move on to the one asset everyone in my family is salivating over… my glass eye collection.

When I last checked, its value was somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. And who knows? It could even be in the millions by now. My father used to say, ‘Money belongs in the safe we keep in the guest house, not in our hearts and minds.’ He was a man of great wisdom, and he knew a good investment when he saw one. That’s how he wound up with a wooden leg collection. One of the finest ever compiled outside of a pirate museum.

When he died, my seven siblings and I were enthusiastically waiting to hear who would be the recipient of all those wooden legs. We anticipated selling the collection to the School for Rare and Discomforting Things so that we could have our own fortune to kickstart our lives. We dreamed of buying boats and houses and that our sister Hattie could purchase a parrot since none of us could stand talking to her.

Even though we had grown up very well to do, father shielded us from the trappings of privilege by refusing to buy us toys or allowing us to join him on his many overseas adventures. When it was announced that father had instructed us to burn his wooden leg collection on his death bed, I was furious. That assortment of artificial limbs was his most valuable possession, and he wanted us to destroy them.

He said he wanted us to make our own fortune in the world. Assemble our own noteworthy valuables. Acquire our own puzzlements. That’s how I began collecting glass eyes. Some of the most realistic-looking eyes this side of the equator. Sometimes, when I open the chest they are kept in, it’s as though dozens of tiny faces are staring back at me. It gives me the most delicious little fright, and when you’re one hundred and six, you take whatever thrills you can get!

I wish I could offer you the same excitement, my wonderful sons and daughters – all thirteen of you. I wish I could bequeath each of my eighty-six grandchildren one pair of eyes each. The hazel eyes for the well-behaved children, the blue eyes for the mischievous ones, and the brown eyes for those whose names I can’t remember, because their personalities are so unremarkable.

However, I can do no such thing, because I am also decreeing that my collection be burned the same way father’s was all those years ago.

The fortune you all may have been expecting is not forthcoming, and I declare you will all be the better for it. My expectation is that this will inspire you all to go out and capture your own little trinkets to rack up in value. Then, as those who have come before you have demonstrated, allow them to sit gathering dust on your mantles or in the back of a cupboard somewhere nobody can see them. For in this family, we do not gather together priceless antiquities to one day sell them, but rather to think about how we could sell them if we wanted to, but we never will, because we’re not savages. It’s not all about dollars and cents. It’s about legs and eyes and maybe one day some other weird and wonderful accessory.

Our family comes from a long line of minimalists, many of them monks who would sneak away from their monasteries to make trouble with the local village girls. Of course, now you know why I was never much for genealogy. We aren’t exactly the descendants of philosophers and kings. Still, I take pride in knowing we’ve come a long way. I believe you all are a large improvement over those who came before you, if only because your chins aren’t nearly as pointy and most of you are able to grow fingernails. I consider that a success.

As much as I’ll miss my ever-expanding family, I have faith that you will each create the most sensational life, and that you won’t be the least bit angry that you cannot use my collection of glass eyeballs to do it. I must apologise in advance for how long it will take to burn them. The wooden legs went up rather rapidly, and I suppose glass won’t be as swift. Nevertheless, I ask that you stand firm and wait until the fire has transformed my most prized possession into nothing more than liquid and smoke.

At that moment, you may not feel much gratitude for me, and that’s all right. Gratitude, like all good things, comes to those who wait. And regardless of the fact that I am currently deceased, I can assure you, I will be waiting.