Bob Rosenbaum

     My grandmother’s large bathroom had a black and white hexagonal tile floor, smelled of bubble bath beads, and had a painted white square stool whose hinged top covered a storage compartment.  Of all the items in her rather formal, dark, vertical home built around 1900 with sliding wood doors and ebony furniture, the only piece we took to our house after her death in 1955 was the white bathroom stool.  Given a place of honor in our basement, it became a storage vessel for supplies I used to shine to perfection my shoes and my father’s shoes. In 1996, six years after my father’s death, the stool was again on the move, this time to my own basement to be safely tucked away under shelving--and ignored. 

     However, within this stool there remain many Treasures: an olfactory connection with my grandmother; the sense of accomplishment and appreciation from my father; the unanswerable question of why this unsightly piece was chosen to endure; and the future gift of wonderment when my children and grandchildren discover it and ask, “What is this?”