Jonna Carter: Patchwork

This past weekend, I visited my mother in Bronxville, N.Y. Her house is not the house in which I was raised. While distance-wise, the two aren't far apart, they're a world and a lifetime apart in every other sense.

The house isn't the same, but many of the furnishings are. My mother lives in a museum of sorts filled with ornate antiques — items for which members of her family have little use. She refers to her furnishings as "family treasures." My brother and I are at the point in our lives where we want to scale down and simplify. Our kids are of a generation that has no interest in accumulating. And so sit these "family treasures" in their mausoleum. They are my mother's treasures and hers alone.