Tin of Memories

I was in a thrift store the other day, not looking for anything in particular. As I was wandering the aisles, I spotted this lonely Gray Dunn cookie tin.

It's just a cookie tin and to be honest... if I was an objective shopper, I would never have noticed this tin. It's not like I'm a vintage cookie tin shopper. But this particular tin grabbed my attention because it was different.

You see... when I was a kid, we had a tin that looked exactly like this tin. Exactly. Except ours lost the little brass handle over the years. My Mom kept this tin on the bottom shelf of the baking cupboard, a cupboard that always smelled like Dr. Oetker baking extracts (bitter-almond, vanilla, rum), sugar and baking. It was the most delicious smelling cupboard ever.

The cookie tin had a tight-fitting lid and my sister and I always had to haul on the handle to get the lid to come off. Sometimes we'd have to pry at the edge to get the lid off. It was a challenging operation and a noisy one particularly if we were trying to sneak a cookie when Mom wasn't looking. But once we were inside, there were all sorts of treasures in there. If it was Christmas, there might be Christmas cookies. If it was just a regular time of year, we might find Dare Fudge Chocolate cookies in there... so good. (Sort of like Fudgeeos but way better... and Canadian to boot!) I can hear the sound of the lid coming off the tin. I can feel the textured sides. I remember staring at the pictures on the tin and being fascinated by the colours and patterns.

At some point, likely when we went to university, our beloved handle-less cookie tin was consigned to the garbage or perhaps a thrift store. It was gone from our life. But I remembered it and always kind of wished that we had kept it. It was just a... to-be-perfectly-honest... rather ugly looking tin with Asian influences. My Mom clearly didn't have the memories associated with the tin that we did. To me, that tin held so much more than cookies... it held home, shared-baking, love, joy, comfort. It was a tin of memories.

They say that when people have trouble decluttering, it's because they are not willing to let go of the memories and emotions associated with a particular item. I totally get that. This particular cookie tin was manufactured by Gray Dunn cookie-makers in Scotland. They made other tins and I looked at some of those pictures and wasn't moved to get them... not even an iota. But this one... this one contains the memories. I look at the tin and it all comes flooding back... happy memories.

So, there I am in the thrift store and I phone my sister who is 5 years younger. I say "Hey, remember that cookie tin we used to have, that orangey thing with the flowers but without the handle?" Her response... "Uhhhh... not really... ummmm". I told her, with a hint of impatience, that I would send her a picture. Five minutes later I got a text from her that said "YES!! Buy it!". All she had to do was see the tin and she knew everything that I was talking about. The cascade of memories triggered for her as well. She has an 8 year old daughter so perhaps this tin will become their cookie tin and hold their memories as well. Luckily the lid fits a bit looser than ours did... so hopefully the lid stays on a bit longer!

In the end, I paid the princely sum of $1.99 for a tin that sells on eBay for $25. Not bad. I probably wouldn't have paid $25 for the tin but $2 was a small price to pay for the memories.