Once a year, in my blog, I start a post with a quote from The Great Gatsby. Each year, the book means something different to me, and as I teach it, I find something new to look at, something I've skipped over in my previous readings of the novel. This year, the line at the beginning of this post jumped out at me; surely I'd read it dozens of times before and never noticed it. But this time, it delighted me... "the silver pepper of the stars..." - silver pepper, indeed. It's beautiful things in our lives that pass us by, that we take for granted, that we should be appreciating but never really notice.
My parents are retired - my dad, for years, and my mom, since January. Once they retired, they began collecting antiques with the goal of selling them. Mom's always been interested in antiques, but never on this level. I live a few hours from them, so I hadn't realized just how serious everything has gotten until I visited them in February. Every inch of their house was piled with... things. Dishes. Glasses. Vintage candy jars. Hundreds of salt and pepper shakers. From the moment we entered their house until the moment we left, I was on edge. Not only did I have to make sure that I didn't inadvertently knock something worth $400 over, I had to keep one eye hawkishly fixed on the 3 year old, making sure that one of his samurai moves didn't catch the porcelain cat on the table with the weighty price tag on it.
For a couple of months, then, I heard stories of my parents' retirement exploits. First, they'd go to antique stores and make friends with the people in "the business". They'd get tips from people and learn how to find good deals. Then they started touring Goodwills all over the state. They would find, say, some Depression glass for $5.00 that had a resale value of $600. Over and over, they built this empire of antiques that people let pass them by. Soon, they opened up a booth in a store in the city they live in, and began actually selling this stuff and making money. Their pipe dream actually paid off, and they were a success!
In early April, SC and I visited again for a weekend. When we got there on Friday, I noticed boxes from the mailman piled on the front porch. This, I learned, was a daily occurrence - Goodwill has an online, ebay-esque site. But that wasn't the only new place to procure antiques. Oh no. On Saturday morning, we all got up and my parents laid out their plans for estate sales. What are estate sales, you ask? Well, apparently, sometimes people die, and their families (a) don't exist or (b) can't be bothered, and so these companies come and clean up the house and sell the things inside it. At times, you can find super duper amazing deals that you can re-sell or keep for yourself or whatnot. Mom and Dad were big-time estate sale people and didn't find this creepy at all. Really. So they gave me two options: I could stay at their house with SC or I could come to the estate sales with them and leave SC with my oldest brother. I rarely get time without the kid, and I was curious about the Wild Crazy World of Estate Sales, so I hopped in the car with the parents.
As I rode in the backseat, my parents plugged in the address in their g.p.s. I was filled with a bit of trepidation. What would happen when we got there? Would we look stupid, traipsing through a dead person's house? Would it be creepy? Would the people there be mean? I don't like mean people. Would there be snacks? I had no idea what to expect. Eventually, we came to a house in a collection of nice condominiums. Dad dropped us off, and I shyly followed my Mom into the house. She had her cane with her, using it for balance. We walked inside the front doors... into another world.
The house was packed. As we shuffled inside, there was a view of some of the rooms in the front, and each was stuffed with people. Items were priced and placed in the rooms that they were typically used in. It took me a few minutes to get acclimated, but after some minutes of observing, I figured out that some items were already sold, and those were labeled. The rules of Ohio politeness were thrown out the window, apparently, because I was shoved and jostled as though the furniture and dishes were being given away. I was quickly annoyed by the people around me. In one bedroom, I paused to check out the price on a dresser. An older woman, clutching knick-knacks and smaller items, pushed me out of the way and declared that it was her dresser. I stared at her, terrified of her crazy, and backed out of the room... slowly. In the next room, I took the time to actually look at the prices. Most of the items were horribly overpriced; for example, there was a pair of tall, skinny lamps that were tagged at $45 each, I could easily pick up similar lamps at a department store for $15 apiece.
Next, I wandered into a back bedroom, where I found jewelry. I found a couple of necklaces that had a certain, some-old-lady-died-in-these appeal. Plus, they were pretty cheap. After that, I had a conversation with some people in a walk-in closet. They were discussing how they would hate to have strangers picking through their house after they died. I commented that I would, likely, be highly amused at their shock, and the strangers looked at me, likely picturing the naughty things that I have hidden in my bedroom.
Anyway, I found my parents, who had collected a large number of glasses or dishes or something, and we waited in a long line to buy our items. After that, we went to an estate sale at a house by the lake. The man who had lived there had been an artist, and I spent a half hour looking through all of his books. It was the second day of the sale, and everything was half-priced, and I found that this was the time that deals were made. I found a hand-carved chess set, hidden in a back room that overlooked the lake, and I got it for $10.
Throughout the whole morning, as I laughed at the crazy people fighting over silly items and made jokes with the more sane of the sale-goers, I delighted in how happy my parents were. Mom was in her element - finding deals and getting excited over what she found. Dad was amused at my mother, more than anything, but he also has found this new specialization in silverwear. The two would stand over some fork or something, discussing its resale value. In addition, I had a great time with my parents. We laughed so hard and made jokes and pointed out ridiculous ironies. As always, my Dad and I were sarcastic and critical of the world, but my Mom even joined in, instead of acting as though she wasn't a part of my Dad and my's world. It was so nice.
Just six months ago, my Dad was bored, my Mom was overworked and underappreciated. Now, they've found this new community of people who appreciate their knowledge. They are so happy now and you can see the years sliding off of them as they maneuver their way through other collectors, making deals and building their collection. It delights me to see how happy they are with this new part of their life. And, you know, if they've gotta go play with creepy dead people things to do it, then whatever. If "happy parents" means "parents who have a cluttered house and stuff from dead people in their house and are superstars in a community of weird people" then it's still happy parents. And like the Gatsby quote that I overlooked for years, my parents have found new life by finding a new part of themselves. What could be better than that?
No comments:
Post a Comment