My six-year-old granddaughter stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time."Grandma, you are an antique ,"she said. "You are old. Antiques are old. You are my antique." I was not satisfied to let the matter rest there. I took out the Webster's Dictionary and read the definition to Jenny.I explained, "An antique is not only old, it's an object existing since or belonging to earlier times...a work of art... piece of furniture. Antiques are treasured,"I told Jenny as I put away the dictionary. "They have to be handled carefully because they sometimes are very valuable. In order to qualify as an antique, the object has to be at least 100 years old." "I'm only 67,"I renunded Jenny. We looked around the house for other antiques, besides me. There was a desk that was handed down from rone aunt to another and finally to our family. "It's very old,"I told Jenny."I try to keep it polished and I show it off whenever I can. You do that with antiques." There was a picture on the wall purchased at a garage sale. It was dated 1867. "Now  that's an antique," I boasted. "Over 100 years old." Of course it was marked up and scratched and not in very good condition. "Sometimes age does that," I told Jenny. "But the marks are good marks. They show living, being around. That's something to display with pride. In fact, sometimes, the more an object shows age, the more valuable it can become." It was important that I believed this for my own self-esteem. Our tour of antiques continued. There was a vase on the floor. It had been in my house for a long time. I was not certain where it came from but I didn't buy it new. One thing about antiques, I explained to Jenny, was that they usually had a story. They'd been in one home and then another, handed down from one family to another, traveling all over the place. They'd lasted through years and years. They could have been tossed away, or ignored. or destroyed, or lost. But instead, they survived. For a moment, Jenny looked thoughtful. "l don't have any antiques but you," she said. Then her face brightened. "Could I take you to school for show and tell?" "Only if I fit into your backpack," I answered. And then Jenny's antique lifted her up and embraced her in a hug that would last through the years. What can be the best title for the passage?
Jenny's Antique A Story of Antiques A Tour of Antiques Grandma's Antique