The death that led me to collecting vintage.
How saying goodbye to my grandparent's home changed my life forever.
In many ways, time stood still in my grandparents home. Both my Baba (grandmother) and Gigi (grandfather) were first generation Americans, brought into the world by Ukrainian immigrants who had fled their ancestral land — hoping to exchange poverty, famine, and political instability for a better life in America.
Their parents settled in the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania, not dissimilar from their homeland in the ridges of the Carpathian mountains, their fathers working in the coal mines and steel mills alongside fellow immigrants.
My Gigi and his brothers built the house he and my Baba called home. Inside polka music played on a boom box that sat in the kitchen. The radio was set to KDKA — the first commercial radio station to air in the States. My Gigi often sat beside the radio, taking a drag from the vice that had the strongest hold on his life — Lucky Strikes.
Their home was full of ritual. In the morning my Gigi would make his coffee in the same mug, stirring the spoon around the mug five times and clanking it clean against the rim thrice. My sister and I would make mud pies and play make believe in the backyard, with my Baba yelling “YO!” from the back door whenever it was time for us to come inside to eat.
She made us peanut butter and banana sandwiches, fried potatoes, and homemade pickles. In the summer we would have raspberry pies from the harvest of the garden, which sprawled the length of the property and was full of many wonderful vegetables and fruits.
My grandparents were Byzantine Catholic, never missing liturgy at their local church and always praying before we sat down to eat supper. The furnishings of the home had been greatly unchanged since the 1970s, and I grew up playing with my father and uncle’s toys — with a favorite of mine being the Spirograph, where I would sit at the kitchen table after dinner mesmerized by the psychedelic shapes I could create within the spinning plastic wheel.
My Baba worked as a nurse, and eventually my Gigi was able to get a degree and worked as an engineer at the steel mill. A drafting table sat in the back room, where my sister and I would sit and draw on long scrolls of paper with flat pencils, whittled down and sharped by my Gigi’s pocket knife — with a large collection being no longer than an inch.
Both of my grandparents were very closed off emotionally, a side effect of being raised by a generation who had endured an immeasurable amount of trauma. Feelings were expressed through objects rather than open lines of communication — they certainly were never discussed. Though it was far from perfect, my grandparent’s was a refuge from a chaotic and violent reality that plagued my home life, and the only space I felt like I had a semblance of a childhood.
Prior to starting my third year in elementary school, my parents moved us away to Southern Appalachia, settling in North Carolina. Visits to my grandparent’s went from multiple days a week to only a couple a year.
In 2010, during my freshman year of high school, my Gigi suddenly passed, with my Baba passing soon after. This year the pilgrimage to their home would not include my Baba’s handmade pierogies for dinner, or my Gigi sitting down to his nightly bowl of ice cream while we watched Wheel of Fortune.
My Gigi had been a bit of a hoarder, and boxes and stacks of artifacts from decades gone — my sources of endless magic and wonder — were now to be disposed of by order of my father.
I was tasked to help clear out the basement, and I was devastated. Fresh off the death of my grandparents, I dragged boxes that contained the story of their life to a rented dumpster. Snake skins my Gigi had collected, bottles of wine from their wedding, papers and documents, their old clothes, and much to my dismay — their record console, which I begged my parents to let me keep, all went straight to the dump.
The 14 year old version of myself was unable to process the magnitude of emotions that were bubbling over the edges, and I shut down. As a consolation prize, I was able to keep a few small objects from my grandparents, but the horror of seeing the remnants of their life becoming garbage had done irreparable damage to my psyche.
Thanks to my art history teacher, I had just discovered the works of Sally Mann, and with my burgeoning interest in photography, I decided to document the last time I would be in their home as a way to cope with the loss.
It wasn’t until recent reflection within the past few years, that I uncovered the significance this event had on the way I moved through the world and grew into adulthood. That day I had vowed to myself to become a keeper. First I kept photographs, documenting much of my teens and early 20s, afraid to lose my memories and stories.
I loved the way old objects appeared in my images, and as my love of vintage grew, I became a keeper of discarded things. I haunted antique and thrift stores, imagining the lives of the people that once owned the objects within their walls, stunned by the miracle of their survival — not wanting them to see the fate I had witnessed at my grandparents.
It’s been 15 years since my path was forever changed that day. I’ve now built my entire life around my love for all things old, with my home and closet filled with vintage objects I have collected over the years, and even my profession of the last 7 years dedicated to being a vintage dealer.
Along the way I’ve met many remarkable people who have entrusted me with their treasures. And for so many of us, these objects mean much more than market value or trending aesthetics, they tell the stories of people who once were. Whether it be grief or joy, vintage objects hold the power to be a conduit for a depth of human experience that words can’t often express.
While I was studying New Media in college, my father reached out to me about digitizing some old Super-8’s that had been taken during his childhood — one of the remnants that had been saved from my grandparents home. These movies became part of the final video project I would make for my degree, a short film called Kotykiewicz — my family name before it was shortened to Koty by my Gigi and his brothers.
It has been one of the more meaningful works I have created in my life, and has been a source of healing for me as I have processed my abusive childhood.
It’s not often I speak about myself, especially my experiences growing up. Having this blog has been a way to practice using my voice, and let a little steam out of the engine that has fueled years of emotional suppression.
So while I’ve sweated the entire time I’ve been writing, and felt a bit like this, I’m proud to be serving a slice of vulnerability with whoever is reading this.
Thanks for being here,
Kari <3
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Thank you for sharing this. Deeply resonating in a million ways, I really enjoyed reading
This was beautiful! My childhood was also spent rifling through my grandparents’ house, and that also inspired my love of vintage. I really enjoyed reading your story and love the idea of antique collection as “keeping”. There truly is so much more to antiquing beyond the price tag.