Deep in a quiet corner of my garage rests two hope chests, one carved from my grandmother’s dreams, the other from my own. Both chests have traveled farther than the women who first filled them could have ever imagined. They’ve lived in eight homes, and in five different states. This is the story of two boxes of hope, holding generations of wishes and waiting patiently from one address to the next, to be used to hold whatever comes next. Are they still “in”? I doubt it. My daughter never asked me for one when she graduated. Do they attract clutter? Of course they do. But it’s the kind of “clutter” that is memorable to your family. Do I still need one now that I’m in the “empty-nester” phase of my life? No. But will I get rid of it? Also no.
Last Era for New Millennium Hope Chests?
Mine was given to me when I was engaged to someone else — a different time, a different, quite younger version of me. I remember the day it arrived. I walked into my bedroom and there it was, a white, handprinted chest with little pink and green flowers painted all around the edges and a pink satin bow was across the top. I fell in love with it immediately. I hadn’t even thought I’d wanted one. Not many of my friends were getting them anymore. I was so excited. I felt grown up. Yes, it was the mid-80s and I was still in college for another semester. I should have been thinking about internships and TV stations to apply to but for me, as outdated as a hope chest was, as un-feministic as it felt to be thinking of myself as a bride rather than a boss lady, I didn’t care. I had come to want and expect every rite of passage a young woman my age and in that era, was afforded. My hope chest represented my future me, the me I would be when I wore pearls and planned dinner parties. Apparently, I thought my life would be reminiscent of Samantha Stevens’ life in Bewitched.
Inside the chest was a heavy brown box with a full set of fancy, shiny silverware from J.L. Hudson. “You use those at your formal dinners,” Mom said. “We’ll get you stainless steel for everyday.” Inside a second very pretty green velvet box were two lovely Waterford crystal Champagne flutes. “I didn’t get them engraved. I thought I’d wait till right before the wedding to get your names on it, just in case,” Mom said, so ominously. Little did I know that I’d eventually use those flutes at my wedding, just not the wedding I was planning at that time. Mom always knew these things. So I guess it was a good thing they weren’t engraved. Mom was gone by the time my wedding day came around and those flutes felt like she’d sent me a wedding present after all. But it made me wonder…was I among the last of the brides to use a hope chest?
Today, after all the moves, my sweet hope chest is 40 years older, a little scratched, a little creaky, but it still holds onto that sweet cedar scent that takes me straight back to the days when we thought adulthood meant monogrammed towels and perfectly folded sheets. For a while though, I used to jokingly refer to it as my “Hopeless” chest when I was still unmarried by my mid-30s. Mom would roll her eyes. Back then, hope chests weren’t really about dowries anymore — they were about dreams.
Hope Chest History
Before hope chests became the cedar-scented memory boxes we cherished in modern day life, they had a fancier name: dowry chests or bridal chests. Back in 15th-century Europe, young women were literally packing up their futures — linens, quilts, maybe a fancy tablecloth or two — all in preparation for marriage. These women would shop for their Trousseaus, which in French meant “small bundle.” Most married women carried into their new married lives these “little bundles” which consisted of their wedding gown, nightgowns and lingerie and their new official wardrobe worn in society as married women. My mom told me women actually used to buy entire new wardrobes of clothing to signify their new role as wife and someday mother. Most of their “single” clothing would no longer be appropriate. Imagine that!
In America, the trend of hope chests really took off in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with companies like Lane Furniture practically selling hope and dreams alongside the chest itself, calling it “The Gift That Starts the Home.” By the 1950s, nearly every young woman had one. During WWII, hope chests became especially symbolic — a way for women to imagine life after the war. By the 60s and 70s, though, their role shifted. Feminism and changing expectations meant they became less about preparing for marriage and more about keeping memories — baby clothes, family photos, and little treasures from life itself. Boomer and Generation Jones women like me remember ours not as a dowry but as a box of dreams: embroidered pillowcases, high school yearbooks, old love letters, poems, cheerleader uniforms, choir robes and an old wedding invitation that never panned out.
Dreams of My Mama, a mid-century Bride
My Mom received her hope chest when my dad went off to the Army after he’d proposed to her. It was the beginning of a new decade, the 60s. For the two years while she waited at home until Dad finished his service in the Army, mom filled her Hope chest with all the things a normal modern girl of that era needed to be an efficient and stylish wife. Wall art, recipes, aprons, lists of plans. But once all those items were at her new home, the hope chest became the holding box for the items from memories she held most dear. My first lock of hair. Mom’s hope chest was quite different from her mom’s chest. Instead of the dark carved wood, mom’s was light and airy, a light blonde wood, a nod to the mid-century décor. Sadly, Mom’s chest was stored in our unfinished basement and it didn’t survive a Michigan basement flooding in the early ’80s, a heartbreaking casualty of rising water and black mold. In it were her wedding veil and gloves, her prom dresses and love letters Dad sent her when he was in the Army among other mementos like my baby shoes and my brother’s Christening gown. She was devastated, so was I. It wasn’t just wood and fabric that was ruined, it was memories. Pieces of her life she’d tucked away, trusting they’d always be safe. We had no choice but to let it go and yet somehow, her stories stayed with us — passed down in the telling, in the laughter, in the way she’d remind me to “keep your good linens wrapped in tissue.” My mother’s chest may be long gone but the legacy of it — and the woman who filled it — lives on every time I open mine.
Gramma’s Depression Era Bridal Dreams
Before her, in another era, my Gramma Lena filled her own hope chest with her own dreams ahead of her marriage to my Grampa Dewey in May, 1935. I imagine things were about as bleak as can be, as it was the beginning of the Great Depression. Just imagine trying to build a trousseau and collect pretty lacey things during the time of breadlines. By then, at 23, she was already considered an “old maid.” I’m sure all that hard work on her family farm didn’t afford her a lot of time to meet men. Likewise, Gramps was also considered to be older than the normal age of marriage for men. “I used to be a bit of a “run-around,” he once told me with a twinkle in his eye. He said his mama was worried that, at 28, he still hadn’t settled down and started a family.(I can only imagine what she thought of me, her great-granddaughter, not marrying till age 39!) “I was a ladies’ man,” Gramps bragged, as he nudged me with his elbow, his signature move. This was met by some very loud, colorful Italian words by Gramma Lena. 🙂 Ironically, I, too, was also considered an “old maid” by family. (well, I was!) Aunts would give me their sympathetic look at family weddings, as if to say “you poor thing.” So I guess marrying later in life was inevitable for me, it was literally in my DNA.
Gramma’s hope chest is a dark, deeply carved wooden beauty that, except for some deep scratches, still looks ready for another century. A coat of paint and I know it’d be a gorgeous unit for storage of more mementos. You can practically smell the history when you open it. Inside it are hand-knit doilies and embroidered hankies Gramma made, Mom’s aprons (many of which I still have) Gramma’s wedding keepsakes, and family photos, all of which have been distributed. It’s hard for me to imagine Gramma as a young girl, carefully putting little keepsakes into her own hope chest and dreaming of her happily-ever-after. She’d had a hard life. Living on a farm in Pennsylvania with all brothers and a much younger sister who rarely helped with household chores, Gramma did most of the cooking and cleaning herself. One day, while making spaghetti, Gramma was rushing around and slipped in the kitchen, falling and pulling a pot of hot scalding water onto her head. She was never able to grow hair in that part of her head, again. Grams was sweet, kind and loving, but I can probably count on my hands the times I’d ever seen her truly happy and laughing. She was simply…well… simple. A little Italian woman who rarely if ever wore makeup or liked really pretty things. So that’s why it surprised to see so many pretty little pieces of lace and tiny knick-knacks saved up and meticulously labeled. I imagine for her, putting things in her hope chest and planning for her new life as a married woman in Detroit was a happy time for the young, hard-working Lena. After cooking and cleaning for a bunch of brothers and farmhands all those years, cooking and cleaning for three kids and a husband was probably a cakewalk! Gramma Lena filled her hope chest while she lived in Pennsylvania and moved it to Detroit where it remained the rest of her life, for the next 60+ years. Only once I inherited it did it sprout travel wings and go on new adventures. 🙂 And no matter where I land in the future, Gramm’s chest of dreams will stay right here with me because I, too, was one of her dreams. I can’t get rid of it because it’s a part of me.
Today, sometimes if I lift the lid on those old chests and catch a faint whiff of cedar, it’s like opening a time machine. My grandmother’s lace, my mother’s handkerchiefs, a few of my own “someday” items and dreams tucked between them. They’ve outlasted trends, floods and numerous moving vans and addresses but what they really hold isn’t just fabric and photographs. It’s hope. Plain and simple. Maybe that’s what these chests were always meant for — not to store linens or dowries but to remind us that hope itself is worth saving. The kind of hope that survives heartbreak and humidity, that follows us from one chapter of life to the next. That says “I’m still here” no matter how far we’ve come or how much life has changed. One thing’s for sure…if I ever hand one of them down to my daughter, I won’t tell her what to put inside. I’ll just tell her to fill it with her own dreams — and to never stop hoping. ##
So tell me, ladies — do you still have your hope chest? Or maybe your mother’s or grandmother’s? What’s tucked inside these days — linens, keepsakes, or maybe a few dreams that still make your heart flutter a little? Please do share!