[Viking2002]

Tonight, my 72-year-old mother fixed a ham in a covered metal roasting pan that her mother owned before my mother was born. It had so many years of baked on this-and-that coating the lid, I told her it would be a cultural crime if anyone ever tried to clean it. When the sad day comes that it changes hands, it will be mine, and it'll be used with all the reverence it's due.

[susannah59]

I've got my mother's iron frying pan, along with the one I've used for years, both in that kind of condition.

I also have my mother's "chicken fork", the long wooden-handled fork she used to fry chicken and meat with; it was her mother's before her. My grandmother died when I was 5. I don't use it but will of course keep it and my sons know what it is. I've also got a collection of aluminum coffee pots and a few thick ceramic coffee mugs, a couple of which came from my great-grandmother. These all sit on top of my kitchen cabinet.

I don't have anything from my dad's family. His mother died when he was a teenager. He and all his siblings are gone now.