I travel back into history when shopping at yard sales. Every yard sale has its own family story. There’s the young couple getting divorced, the aged woman whose husband recently died, the farmer whose business folded. I walk through so many lives at yard sales. I fantasize about the owners’ stories over time. So many lives blend into each other.
I bought a wooden school desk and chair. How many anxious children sat in that chair? How many put their bubble gum on the underside? The desk has an ink hole. Who gently and slowly dipped their pen in the ink hole writing a short story to read to the class? Why did the school close? Or was the desk dumped for more modern desks?
I furnished my first New Haven apartment with yard sale items — a round, wooden coffee table, metal kitchen table, glasses and ceramic bowls, a framed copy of a Picasso painting.
Who do I sit with at the kitchen table? How many lives ate cereal, or soup, from my bowls?
At times I am alone, but never lonely. How many souls sat around my wooden coffee table, chatting and laughing, maybe crying. I drink wine with them. They share their stories with me. I write their histories, my fantasies, their lives forever remembered, in the yard sales of time.
I mediate on Picasso’s “Woman and Child.” I see me and my mother, who died when I was six. I look at the pictures of her holding me at the zoo, on a blanket in the park; her eyes a little dark and tired in some. I wonder, when she held me, if that was the beginning of her pain. I am alive with the memory of her walking me to my first kindergarten class, laughing, me trying to walk in step with her. So few memories; so many expectations thwarted by cancer.
Do you dream or fantasize about the past – what if? Or about the future – what may be? Or do you try to stay in the current moment, fully present, open to what may be, not habitually or repetitively wrestling with the thoughts of the past or the future? Living your imagination in the present? Not easy. Definitely challenging.
Let’s share. Would enjoy hearing from you.
2019 © Roberta S. Kuriloff
This is gorgeous, Roberta: “I walk through so many lives at yard sales.”
Garage sales, flea markets–probably the most direct neurological connection to my mom (!) I grew up on garage sales, and now I express my frugal nature at thrift stores (!) There, I will remember all the lives I’m walking through, too.
Hi Marj,
I also like thrift stores and flea markets. It is fun to wander through with wonder at who owned the items and why they discarded them. Great stories of the mind. I had a beautiful pin of my mother’s that I treasured. My father saved it for me. It was stolen, with other items, when my first apartment in Manhattan was robbed. I was devastated. I wondered if the thief ever thought about the history of that pin!
Thanks for sharing, Roberta
I often romanticize about items from the past, as you have described. Old photos are especially poignant. I have imagined others, from the past, dining at my table and what conversations may have taken place. Who placed flowers in an old vase. The person who planted the rhubarb in my in yard. Although we never met the owners of those things we now call ours, their memory lives on.
Hi Adrienne,
The human imagination has so many possibilities! This is the fun part. I have an old apple tree on my land near an empty spot in the field by an old wrought-iron fence. I like to imagine who lived there and what their lives were like. Now, the deer live there, building their families and hiding from predators. We watched the cutest two fawns grow up this summer, playing in the field and quite close to our house. Also, a family of wild turkeys share some of the space with the deer! Oh how I wish I could experience the imagination of the animals.
Thanks for sharing, Roberta
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay, Roberta!
Thank you Nina.
I, too, love old treasures from yard sales to antique shops. I once purchased, and still have, a copper teakettle and was told it came from the estate of William Cullen Bryant, not necessarily his. But all the same, I look at it and think, wow, someone actually used this kettle on an open fire. Who was it? Was it a woman heating water for tea? Was it water for a bath? What else? I can be swept away for a few minutes just conjuring up different scenarios!
Hi Judi,
Thanks for sharing your experiences. It is fun conjuring up history. Such stories make books and movies. My best, Roberta