YARD SALE FOR THE SOUL....
Knowing what to sell, what to give, and what to keep....
This weekend I was out at my mother's house on Long Island helping her with a Yard Sale. You all know yard sales, of course; endless lines and piles of used stuff that you don't need but are tempted to buy simply because it's there. Goldfish bowls, golf clubs, Ray Mancini Sings The Blues records and God knows what else, all there lying in wait to suck your wallet dry.
I had never really thought about what it means to the person running the yard sale to get rid of all this stuff.
For my mother, and by extension me, it was the beginning of major change.
As my parents age, they are looking to sell their home, move back into the City, downsize, and simplify their lives. This sale of endless tchotckeys was the beginning of this movement to a new life for them.
My parent's lives are changing.
Buddha wrote that nothing is permanent, that the ultimate illusion is stability. I remember feeling the truth of this when I was with my mother on her last day in the apartment I grew up in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan prior to she and my father's moving out to Long Island. All around us the movers and workmen were quickly and efficiently removing any trace of the life we all led in that place for the prior thirty years. My mother asked me if I was upset. I started to cry but something inside of me stopped and I answered: "No, it's just a place. A place we loved, but just a place."
That moment stays with me. I can never quite get as attached to people, places or things as I used to. I know it's all going to end, myself included ---- and somehow, that's not a bad thought. Of course, this clarity comes and goes. Like the rest of us, I'm human. I just feel lucky to have this sense of distance at least sometimes present in my life.
And you? These are big thoughts, particularly when you're talking about a yard sale...but then again, we get what we pay for ---- and we all pay, one way or another. What do you think?
8 comments:
The relationship between self and place is always a multifaceted one. We are different selves in different places, or we experience various aspects of ourselves in various environments. That said, I'm all for using a change of place as an opportunity to scrub myself clean of motes that are clinging to me, like tchotchkeys and unopened rolls of wallpaper and the top that I thought looked great but never wore again after someone pointed to the colors and then held their ears. Those things are motes, like dust, and need to be washed off once in a while or eventually your pores won't be able to breathe. I know lots of people with clogs like that.
Just wonderful, Bonnie. Thank you.
I completely understand. I had a garage sale last fall and am in the process of "cleaning out" the last two rooms in the house my late husband and I bought in 1984. Although I really do want to move on with my life, I am managing to procrastinate a lot.
Moving on is quite a challenge. Isn't it? Really, I think all mess and disorganization is related to holding on. If I could let go of what is intrenched in my heart, I would be able to keep things very spare.
The only constant is change.
In 2000, while still in college my parents decided to move out of Westchester and back into Manhattan,where they both grew up.They moved to a one bedroom apartment. I'm the youngest of four, so there was really no need to have a house in the burbs anymore. We had a garage sale, selling all sorts of old things from my childhood. At the time it was really hard. I felt I was in no mans land. College isn't really home and home as I knew it was gone. Since then I lived in Queens and Brooklyn and its been nice to have my parents a subway ride away.
Thanks, Max. I remember myself returning from my first foray to college and finding my parent's home rearranged. I found it very dislocating.
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