Your grandmother’s sewing machine still works because someone oiled it. Legacies need maintenance.

Things that last are not built to last so much as kept. Somebody oiled the machine, somebody told the story at dinner one more time, and none of it counted as an event at the time. What gets handed down is less a monument than a long series of small repairs by people whose names you might not even have.

Pick one thing in your family you would miss if it stopped, and do the upkeep yourself this month. Ask for the recipe before you need it. Record the story on your phone while the person telling it is still in the room.