Memories for Sale

There is something about yard sales that always makes me feel a little sad.  I don’t actually know if sad is the proper adjective to use; nostalgic maybe?  Either way, sifting through someone else’s things makes me feel like I’m either invading their privacy, judging their sanity (that is to say, “why in God’s name did you ever own that?!”), or getting a glimpse at who they were at one point or another.  This weekend it was the Doyle’s that were on display in the neighborhood.

I not-so-secretly used to wonder, often aloud and full of scorn, how my parents had acquired so much crap in their house.  Well I ate a big ‘ole slice of humble pie as I recently looked around my own basement and wondered, aloud and wrought with that familiar scorn, how we had accumulated so much of our own shit in the basement of a home we had only inhabited for four years.  My parents had at least taken a good thirty or so years to do their damage but I felt like at the rate we were travelling, I was well on my way to an episode of hoarders.  So, yard sale it was. 

We put out tables and tables of items that had at one time seemed like great little home additions- lamps, framed art or decorative quotes, a yo-nana (the frozen “yogurt” maker-that-uses-bananas-but-I’m-the-only-banana-eater-in-the-house-and-so-it-was-solely-a-dust-collector-investment...don’t you judge us), etc.

We were shocked each time a car drove off with things that we couldn’t imagine anyone would want.  More than that, the mix of people that stopped by entertained us.  I can’t tell you how many well-meaning older ladies commented after seeing some of the baby items we had for sale, “Oh you’re done having babies?”  I wanted to say, “I don’t know but this crap earned its spot on the table because I learned only by trial-and-error how ridiculous that trendy eco-friendly bathtub is and my incredibly overpriced stroller was awful to push and had no shock absorbency and woke my sleeping baby every time I pushed her in it and hit a bump and I am hoping that I can try and recoup my bad investments by making them seem appealing to you!”  Instead I just smiled and said, “For now!” because I may be a lot of things but I am certainly polite above all else.

Kennedy seized our clean out as an opportunity to evoke her executive veto power in regards to selling anything that she had ever laid eyes on.  Seriously, if she touched it at one point in her life we couldn’t sell it.  So we distracted her and kept her busy hocking lemonade at the bottom of the driveway in order to unload a few things we felt she could survive without-we like to live dangerously, Sean and I.  She was a natural, and made, with the help of one Cooper J-code name Gingersnap, $15 over the two days of selling.  Seriously though, the two of them ate it up, as did the people that downed their somewhat cool lemonade on a 90-degree day. 

My little guy made his presence known when our new neighbors stopped by with their two little kids, a little girl wearing an elephant on her shirt, and a little boy…named Holden.  I held it together long enough for them to walk away without giving them the impression the lady down the block is a lunatic, but I still have goosebumps thinking about it.

We broke up the days with some laughs, dips in Kennedy’s little pool, and freeze pops galore. 

So no, it’s not the things themself that make me nostalgic at yard sales but the memories that are attached to them.  Like seeing the little porcelain boy holding McDonald’s fries doesn’t really do it for me in-and-of-itself but it doesn’t take much for me to remember being the 7 year old girl begging her mom to make the three reasonable (HA!) installments of $29.95 after seeing him in a catalogue.  I remember watching my new little peanut sleep in that stroller on the back deck for hours wondering if I was letting her sleep too long and I remember being so excited to find the adorable canvas of a newspaper-hat-wearin’ pirate when I’d decided that would be the theme for Jack’s nursery.  And really when it comes down to it, you’re selling the stuff not the memories not to mention clearing some space to make some new memories.

little baby Kennedy

In a stroke of luck there were no takers for that because I don’t think I was really ready to let it go-and who knows maybe there is a place for him on my office walls next school year.

One last side note: I bought this from my sister for a quarter.  It is a 25 mL beaker that I will now use as a tiny bud vase.  Why did I have to have this you ask?  Well my rule-abiding-at-all-cost sister stole this from our uppity private high school’s science lab.  And that right there, ladies and gents, is a memory I will keep forever.