Drawers and Cupboards

Once Tom and I drove to an estate sale way out in the country of a nearby town. 

The large, white farmhouse had belonged to one family for over 140 years and that day, spread over acres, was the flotsam and jetsam removed from inside where families had burrowed together.

 The tree-surrounded house had been purged of its decades and decades of stuff: 1940's lamp shades, sea-foam rugs, mahogany beds and tables, round boxes of Mother's Oats and bisque dolls in heaps. And books! One field looked like a garden ready to be harvested of its rows of boxes of books.

Tom and I, beneath cloudy, cold skies walked around, mesmerized. We poked at old items spread everywhere and oh, how I wished that I could've been one of the emptiers of that house. What fun to wade through all the drawers, cupboards, closets, making discoveries of treasures and serendipities which people hoarded over 100 years. Layers of stuff which decades of children and parents deemed worth keeping.

Slowly we drove home that day. Took a different route, one through hills bursting in autumn and thankfully, I wasn't the one driving because I was encased in a dream. I wondered about my own drawers and cupboards. What do they conceal? What do they reveal about me and what I like and who I am?

Probably, I'd be surprised.

Still, since that estate sale day, I've viewed my drawers and cupboards more like treasure chests which, someday, people will pick through. And part of me likes that idea, I want to collect unique, old things which will make the sifters-of-my-stuff smile with excitement of possible discovery.

But the other part? It wants to share the treasure right now with those who would appreciate them. Of course, hoarding is not exactly the 'godly way to go' so lately I find myself collecting my own flotsam and jetsam, yes, but with a different eye. With an eye and a spirit which can, at the drop of a 1930's felt hat, give away any bit of treasure to anyone who may voice an especial delight.

May I see all items in my drawers and cupboards as temporary--almost like foamy shells rolling into shore, then tumbling back out to sea. Here, then gone to a better belonging place.

And I want to look at my credit card as a type of golden ticket so to bless others with surprises on what may be a sad-afternoon-turned-sweeter after a walk to their mailbox and the discovery of treasures inside.

Rather like "gathering flowers while ye may" and giving them away this side of Heaven.


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