The Importance of THINGS?

.FROM WHERE I SIT            The Importance of THINGS    June 18, 2012

Who doesn’t enjoy surrounding ourselves with lovely things?  The trouble comes when it’s time to move on from a home, to downsize.  What do we do when we have to eliminate many precious things representing memories we treasure.  Often others don’t share the same fondness for thEse beautiful things..

What does a person do with all the lovely items accumulated through many years?  And good money was spent on most of these things.  Why don’t kids and grandchildren value these things like we do?  They probably have vastly different tastes in furniture, dishes, and jewelry.  And so few bake or cook any more.  Do they eat out every night?  No wonder Americans are getting so fat.

This past weekend our family held a garage sale...a first for several of us.  It’s a production entailing lots of sweat and manual labor.  Emotions were sure to surface when we spied favorite dishes we enjoyed seeing on traditional holiday tables or the crystal candy dishes in pinks Grandma loved so much.  And the pictures depicting scenes of Norway, her ancestors, and family photos brought tears.  What should be done with all the photo albums of so many people known only to her?

It’s hard choosing which things to keep, which things to put on the sale tables.  It took almost a week to clean out the cupboards, china, linen, and clothes closets, shelves and bookcases.  I sat down, rocked back and forth in her lovely rocker, thinking...

I have to keep that rocker.  Nobody but me knows how comforting it can be.

Dealers showed up before 7AM!  Though our sales force was up by 5AM, we were still drinking coffee and marking things when the knowledgeable dealers drove into the driveway and asked if we were open.  Well, we weren’t going to turn away customers!  They knew prices.  We didn’t know the dollar value of the china, glassware, and linens like they did.  Perhaps we priced things too low.  But that’s OK; those folks getting these things will be very happy.  They’re so lovely.

By 8AM crowds had arrived, quickly picking up and depositing their chosen things into separate piles: this is Johnson’s; this is Elwood’s; this is...  Stacks of beautiful linens began piling up on tables with cookware and bake ware tumbling over each other.  Feverishly I wrote down prices, adding and totaling, then collecting cash.  We had an unsophisticated money box; it was a fishing tackle box that I tossed cash and loose charge into.  It worked just fine.

Perhaps most important at the sale were the people who came wanting something to remember their friend.  Seeing the smiles on buyers’ faces was gratifying.  Her things brought some happiness into the lives of others.  Most memorable to me was the woman who came to our sale with her arm in a sling and a child with special needs at home.  She was so happy to be able to purchase a few things she found brought pleasure into her life.  We tucked into her packages the framed Norwegian prayer: “I Jesu navn går vi til bords å spise, drikke på ditt ord. Deg, Gud til ære, oss til gavn, Så får vi mat i Jesu navn. Amen. In Jesus' name to the table we go.”

We learned an important lesson hosting this garage sale.  Don’t place too much importance on things, no matter how lovely or what the cost.  Things come and go. 

In the end, what matters most are family, friends, and health.