Day 39

Today’s cleaning project: My curio cabinet. Having finished the dusting and vacuuming, the closets and cupboards, I’ve moved on to the pesky, always-putting-them-off projects and my curio cabinet definitely fits that bill.

The cabinet is admittedly old-fashioned and out of sync with our modern house, but I love it. The cabinet is loaded with rows and rows of tiny, delicate Hummel figurines.

Do you remember Hummels? They’re based on the pastoral sketches, mostly of children, done long-ago by a German nun, Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel.

In the mid-1930s, her drawings came to the attention of porcelain maker Franz Goebel who started manufacturing figurines based on those sketches and, for a time, they were immensely popular and sold for increasingly inflated prices here in the United States.

My parents started my collection when we lived in NYC. They would buy them for me for all the usual special occasions and through the years, my collection grew quite sizeable.

The Collection Keeps Growing

My father’s business partner, who was German, would also buy them for me at dirt cheap prices on trips home to Berlin. Werner was a rough and tumble sort of guy and when he brought them over for me, he literally pulled them unwrapped one after another out of his jacket and pants’ pockets.

For my part, I didn’t merely admire the delicate figurines and stick them on a shelf, I played with them like dolls!

Despite playing with the porcelain figures, I never broke one, and today I still have them all. There’s a lot to look at and a lot to clean.

Now, homebound, I’m eyeing my Hummel cabinet with the same kind of laser-sharp eye that Mr. Clean must have when he sees a mess in need of his scrubbing expertise.

I’ve got a basin filled with warm sudsy water. Yes, those sweet little figurines are over-due for a dunking. They don’t know how to swim, but tough luck, little dollies. It’s sink or swim time. Ready or not, you’re all going splish-splash!

Of course, I’m the one a-wash, a-wash in memories of a time long ago, when I was a little girl, safe with my parents and rough and tumble Werner, all taking care of me, protecting me from the danger of big city New York and letting me enjoy the pleasures of being a little girl playing with dolls.

And as I think about my Hummels which my father so loved buying me, I must also note that this week marks the 36th yahrzeit, the 36th year of my father’s passing. Yes, it’s been quite a memory-packed week. No wonder I’ve been on such a cleaning frenzy. I just had to keep moving … and eating.

But enough looking back! Time to shake it off.

On a Lighter Note

Here’s a cartoon from The New Yorker that tickled my funny bone. I hope you enjoy it!

“Go to sleep. Everything will be worse in the morning.”

So goes Day 39. Have a good weekend. And please note: I am NOT picking up a dust rag. I am not vacuuming. I may live wild and not even make the bed. (Who am I kidding? What am I an animal?)