An Inexhaustible Storehouse--peggy's prompt of 10/24/14

I live with several inexhaustible storehouses.  One is my physical house.  My rooms filled with stuff, things, precious objects, worthless trinkets, memorable items.  The rooms are not nearly as filled as they were, say, 25 or so years ago, when I was at the height of my holdings.  I’ve been downsizing ever since.  So many things have gone the way of yard sales, donations to Goodwill, given to friends and neighbors, sold on Craigslist, eBay, Amazon….it exhausting to even think about it.  

Although I haven’t been nearly as acquisitive and pack-ratty as many of my friends, still…..I look around my rooms, and almost every object brings up a different memory.  Where I was when I got the carved wood African animals. Who gave me the artist’s proof that hangs over my TV.  Why I bought that particular couch.  How old Jonathan was when he produced that finger painting that his teacher proudly presented us with, and that I had framed and have hung on a wall wherever I’ve lived ever since.  My cherished piano and how many times the poor thing has been moved.  Can’t have been good for it, but it still has a magnificent tone, at least to me whose hearing is not what it once was.

Lately I’ve been listing a lot of the small things I’ve accumulated over the years— can’t say “collected” because that would imply some sort of organized plan—on a website called Etsy.  Things like a two-tiered party candy or cookie dish that someone, I have no memory of who, gave Dennis (my first husband) and me as a wedding gift some 40 years ago. It might seem a sacrilege to sell off wedding gifts for money, but I still have a few other things from that first marriage and as they say, you can’t take it with you. 

Etsy is mostly for people to sell their handcrafted items, but they do allow the sale of “vintage” items, which by their definition is more than 20 years old.  By that definition, practically everything in my house is eligible.  So I look around and my eye falls on an antique bowl that used to be part of a pitcher-and-bowl set that people had in their bedrooms before they had indoor plumbing.  The pitcher, which I loved, got broken many years ago. Larry (with my money) bought that at the first and only auction we ever went to.  One reason we didn’t go to more was that I could see that Larry was a gambler at heart, and also couldn’t bear to lose, so letting him loose in a hot bidding environment was going to be costly.

But back to me and my possessions which seem to be inexhaustible, despite my efforts to off-load them onto other possessors.  There are some things that I will never part with, and my son and my sister, and perhaps my step-daughter will have to see to their “final” destination.  Some things I have already determined who should get, as in, Larry should get the art piece he made that hangs on my wall, along with the framed grave rubbing that he made in Concord MA cemetery in 1974, and the wood block print made by our artist friend, now deceased, and maybe the finger painting Jonathan did.  See what I mean about how these possessions are just loaded with memories?  Rich memories. Complicated memories. Happy and sad memories. I can’t let those pieces go until or unless I have to.

These objects, these things, chronicle the ages and stages of my life, from the milking stool that my Granddaddy Hunter bought me at the Checkerboard Feed Store in Ovieto, Florida when I was about three years old, up to the lovely green ceramic vase that I bought at a Goodwill store after I moved here this year. I didn’t have a good toothbrush holder and it’s perfect in that function.

I bet I could list the many stages of my life and then find at least one possession from that era.  I just mentioned the milking stool from early childhood.  Then there’s the original Monopoly set from my middle years.  And there’s my official high school graduation photo that my Mother put in an elaborate frame and which I inherited when she died.  And college.  Oh my gosh.  College. The biggest thing would be the twelve framed watercolor calendars for the months of 1963, the calendars sent by my housemother from Korea.  And the smallest is probably the yo-yo sent to me through the mail by Anne, my roommate, unwrapped, just the plain yo-yo, with one of those old-fashioned package tags fastened to the end of the yo-yo string.

As I think about it, I think I’ve previously gotten rid of things that didn’t mean much to me—furniture and dishes and kitchenware and books that hadn’t been off the shelf in decades.  That means that the things surrounding me now are more likely to be special, to carry stories inside of them (or inside of me) and to be harder to let go of. 

It’s funny; that reminds me of one of the few things I’ve given away that I wish I had back.  It’s a wine bottle in the shape of a fish.  I bought the wine when we lived in Iowa City in the early 1970’s.  Not for the wine; it was an impulse purchase for the bottle.  It probably cost all of three dollars, maybe.  But we drank the wine—not very good—and I kept the bottle.  I stored it inside an oak “commode” that we also bought in Iowa at a farm estate sale, and that I had brought home to our two-bedroom apartment and put in the empty second bedroom, along with Larry’s arc welder which he just had to have, and then I stripped the old varnish off and refinished the chest. 

Anyhow, the wine bottle sat there through all the many subsequent moves until I was preparing to move here. I brought it out and looked at it and put it on a table with other things I was giving away to anyone who would take them.  It was picked up and taken by one of my friends—that’s the saving grace, at least it didn’t go to Goodwill, I know where it is. But sometimes I miss it.  I miss having it.  I miss knowing it’s there in its little cubby, just waiting for the right moment to be used as a vase, or a candle holder.  But that moment never came, and now it’s too late.  Sniff.  That’s why I have to be careful about what I list on Etsy.  It’s just possible that someone will buy it and then it’ll be really gone, not just out of sight.