by Jim Whitehouse
“Lucy’s on my lap and Max is cuddled up next to me,” says my beloved wife Marsha, who is spending a few days in Florida with our daughter Jill’s family and menagerie. We’re talking on our phones, using video so we can see each other.
Marsha swings her camera this way and that so I can see the two cats.
“Where’s Walter?” I ask, referring to the big English Bulldog that shares the house with Max and Lucy, the cats.
“He’s snoring on the floor by my feet,” says Marsha, pointing the camera down so I can see the big lug.
“I’m all snugged in too,” I say. “The Elephant is quiet, Timothy is staring at me and the Tobys are making faces at me.”
I’m sitting in my chair, the one I built that has its own ZIP Code. The lamp next to me is providing a nice puddle of light. The Elephant is on the hearth of the fireplace and Timothy, the cat is indeed sitting atop his usual table staring at me. Five miniature Toby mugs that belonged to me grandfather sit on the mantle above The Elephant. I don’t have to swing the camera for Marsha to see them because The Elephant is made of bronze, Timothy of brass and the Toby mugs of clay.
Both of the critters were my paternal grandmother’s and somehow, they both ended up in our house after being passed around with my siblings in the years after her death.
The Elephant is an elaborate thing with a fancy enameled blanket over his back and a soaring Asian-style 4-tiered pagoda rising above. His trunk is raised high as if he is trumpeting.
The pagoda serves as an incense burner, and occasionally one of us will dig an incense cone out of the very drawer in the very walnut buffet where my other grandmother kept her incense back in the days before aerosol and plug-in air fresheners.
Seeing the smoke drift up from the openings in that elephant’s pagoda and smelling its mysterious scent reminds me of both of my grandmothers.
As for Timothy, he guarded the door at my paternal grandmother’s home, and she’d often give his head a pat as she left the house. “You be good, Timothy. Watch the house.”
Timothy’s little table was built by three people. The square wooden column that supports the top was built about 150 years ago by a pipe organ builder. That organ pipe was once part of the pipe organ on which a famous song, “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,” was composed by F. Dudleigh Vernor in 1911. The organ pipe was shortened and the top of the table was affixed by the late and legendary table maker and professor of English, John Hart.
Dr. Hart also built the original base, but it was in bad shape when he gave me the little table, so I rebuilt it.
Marsha and I used to keep a plant on that table, but Timothy took it over one day after the plant died and he has lived there ever since.
The miniature Toby mugs have fascinating little faces and clothing depicting various characters from the books by Charles Dickens and English folklore. They were mementos of my grandfather’s youth in England.
On my dresser rests a pocketknife and watch chain that belonged to my maternal grandfather, a farmer who probably carried those things only when wearing his Sunday church clothes.
Just as Marsha is comforted by Walter the dog with Lucy and Max, the cats, I am oddly comforted by my ZIP Code chair, the credenza, The Elephant, Timothy, the pocketknife and the Toby mugs.
