Grandma’s Chamber Pot
•October 15, 2025•

by Janet Roney

 I have too much stuff. Henry David Thoreau had a cure for too much stuff in his masterwork, Walden. He said to imagine tying everything you own onto a long rope, then dragging it all behind you everywhere you go. We would soon get rid of most of it.

When I pawed through piles of stuff inside my great aunt Oma Baker’s ancient oak wardrobe, looking for two Afghans I bought for gifts, I wondered who was responsible for all this stuff. Was it my Baker ancestor who came from Wales to Rhode Island in the 1600s to worship freely with Roger Williams? Did he bring a bunch of stuff with him, like this wardrobe, a bedstead, and maybe a chamber pot? Not likely. Did my Shuman ancestor, who left Germany for Philadelphia in the 1830s to escape becoming cannon fodder, bring his beer steins, walking sticks, and a cuckoo clock along with his shoe cobbler tools? No way! Did the little servant girl who came to Jamestown in 1610, the mother of my husband’s family line, drag a line of possessions after her to the new World? I don’t think so. All the stuff I was pawing through accumulated recently. 

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