Journaling font -- Aleo
Title font -- TangieAJFwalrus
Background and elements from Bella Gypsy --
You and Us
Journaling --
I love this jade inlaid screen. I don’t just love it because it is pretty, I love the story and memories I have of it. This screen was in my parent’s dining room for many years. I think they may have bought it while I was in college while they were on a trip to China.
My mother kept an index card in a binder in her computer room that her daughters (and grandchildren) could write down something from the house that they wanted when my parents moved from the house. A few years before my dad died and my mom moved to an assisted living facility, she mentioned that I hadn’t asked for anything. My sisters had asked for various jewelry pieces, my niece had asked for some china, but I hadn’t “claimed” anything. Finally, I said that I would like the jade screen and she gave me the card to write on it.
In February 2014, my dad moved to heaven and my mom moved to an assisted living facility in March. It took a few months, but slowly, the three daughters went through the house giving some things to charity and keeping some for ourselves. The screen is very large so I couldn’t take it home immediately, but I took some other keepsakes. At the same time, another niece was living in the house and basically not taking care of it and we were trying to get her to move out. (In essence, she was a squatter and her mother wouldn’t make her move out!). My husband and I borrowed his mom’s SUV and drove back to Oklahoma to see my mom and to get the screen. The squatter niece was back in one of the bedrooms when we were loading the screen into the SUV. She didn’t come out and talk to me, but she did call my oldest sister, her Aunt Dona, to tell her that “Kim and Mark are stealing the screen -- that her sister wanted it.” Fortunately, Dona told her that we weren’t stealing it, it was mine.
I have many better memories of the screen. I also inherited the dining room table and have both of them in my dining room now. I remember so many nice family meals at that table. Now I am the one having the dinners at that table with the screen in the room too. I just laugh at being accused of stealing it and am grateful for my sister for standing up for me.
