GIVE A LITTLE…

Give a little bit…Give a little bit of yourself…

This week has been a week of strangers running in & out of our house.  Bathroom remodeling & estate sale prep.  Everything coming apart then being put back together in some unfamiliar way.  The Baby Boomer Estate Sales folks have been in our house for 4-5 hours daily.  Great folks & it’s fun-at first-to talk about all the THINGS they discover in your house.  Then you begin to realize that each item has some significance in your life.  Each one holds a memory.  And it haunts you a little.  They say memories are better than things…”mem’ries, in the corners of my mind”.  But am I selling a piece of my soul with each item I set on the sales table?

Certain words come to mind in this process: Deconstruction (to break down into parts, dissect, dismantle-ah, there it is); Purging (to rid of whatever is undesirable); Non-attachment (Buddhist term for, well, it’s obvious). But even reviewing the words somehow perpetuates holding on.  The bottom line is-Stuff consumes your time, money & energy.  You buy it, care for it, sell it.  You must have it.  And it must be bigger, shinier, brighter, cleaner.  Mostly you must buy it.  But perhaps that is a whole different post.  And I must remember that many of these things we cherish are handmade, singular, useful, beautiful.

But back to memories.  Some things, special things, have already been parceled out in special wrappings to friends, creating more memories.  Then there are all those things holding memories of my past.  The signature blue & pink Pisgah Forest Pottery vase picked from the shelves of a well-known Maggie Valley family as a gift to my mother when I was 12.  The dresser & mirror handmade by my paternal grandfather & coveted for years until my mother’s death.  The Diego Rivera poster, part of a wonderful journey to New Mexico with my dear friend Margaret.  The large blue pottery vase given to me by the wife of a cancer patient that I had visited as a massage therapist.  The blue (I’m seeing a theme here) & white creamer & sugar bowl purchased in Portland, Maine, while attending a long-term care nurses conference where I was honored to be 1 of 13 nurses from all over the country chosen for a special committee.

The black & white photo captures the reunion of Black Mountain College alumni & family on the Lake Eden campus in the late ’90’s where I was a volunteer.  The Kwan Yin statue was a gift during a meaningful exchange of dear objects while I was attending Body Therapy Institute as a massage student.  The peach satin dress- a real find @ My Secret Closet-worn to my son’s wonderful wedding in a mountain field 2 years ago.   Each item holds a memory.  Some more dear than others.  All pieces of the puzzle that is me.

Ben, too, has his memorable objects & walks room to room sharing his own thoughts with the sales team.  He has been in the craft world for nearly 40 years & has collected & traded for those objects all that time.  For him, & for myself really, it is hardest to let go of the things, created or shared by those who have left this world.

This week has been frenetic, unnerving, exhausting, overwhelming, bringing home the “what are we doing’ question once again.   There were moments we could not stand the sound of another voice, another hammer or saw, another slam of a door.  In the midst of it all we somehow managed to obtain our Mexican visas from the Consulate in Raleigh & to book our parting flights for November 27th.  Big accomplishments.  Now the bathroom is nearly done & the sale is only a week away, after months of preparation.  And with each item sold I’ll give, we’ll give, a little bit, a little piece of ourselves, of who we’ve been throughout our lives & the energy of those items, to those who walk away.  I hope they’ll leave with a smile knowing that they also have now created, collected another memory.  For themselves.  And for us, as we make our way to creating new memories.