The coffee shop ceiling is decorated with massive paper flowers in bright hues. The flowers spin and sway gently with the breeze from the open garage door. It’s art festival weekend on Walnut Street, bringing an eclectic mix of shoppers – the wealthy older couples, young men delighted to find themselves holding hands with the person beside them, large groups of friends sipping their drinks while they study various offerings of the white tent stores lining both sides of the street.  

After days of cold, rainy weather, today is the perfect, balmy spring day that every shopper and seller hopes to experience. I probably wouldn’t be here, immersed in the sound and color, except that I forgot it was festival weekend. It’s not the most conducive writing environment but somehow, I’m not sorry. One of the most necessary things about community is the reminder that we are not, no matter how much it sometimes feels like it, actually alone. 

My eldest and I have been sharing Mary Oliver poems recently as he reads through a collection I lent him. It’s funny to me that the worst criticism people can level at her is that she’s “too accessible” a poet. SMH Craft that is incomprehensible to all but the most elite readers is a failure IMHO. It’s supposed to speak to us, to help us articulate our own thoughts and feelings, to make us feel seen. If it’s not understandable, how does it fill those critical gaps in the human experience?

I listen to a lot of music while I’m writing. In the course of doing some research, I discovered a Willie Nelson song that I hadn’t heard. That’s not really surprising since he has like 140 albums of material but I particularly like his really old and his really new stuff. I’m honestly slightly less a fan of his middle years, mostly because my father played Willie’s outlaw music ad nauseam when I was growing up. One of my favorite’s is “Last Man Standing” but you should check out “Oh What A Beautiful World,” the song I just discovered, which he performs with Rodney Crowell. 

Another great new listen is “Labour – the cacophony” from Paris Paloma. It’s seriously an anthem, though I suspect women will connect to it in a way that men can’t. No offense, gentlemen. Just facts.

Yesterday morning, I went to two estate sales, a thing my daughter and I often do together. But Saturday, I was alone, standing in a long line of people eager to get *things.* It was cold but is often too warm inside. I made the possibly foolish choice not to wear a jacket that I’d have to carry once I got into the house. Perhaps I thought the line would move quickly but it did not. I stood in the cold with several dozen other people for 45 minutes, awaiting my – exciting – turn to ENTER THE HOUSE. This might sound crazy but I am a very nebby person who enjoys viewing the lives of other people through the contents of their houses. 

It’s also an absolute delight to people-watch in line and to see what the people leaving the sale have purchased. The two ladies in line behind me – obviously lifelong friends – apparently felt the same and had a running commentary that was a treasure for me to hear. They pulled me into their conversation a few times – teasing me, a stranger, about my choice of a short-sleeved shirt and sweater – as the older woman complained that her gloved pinky finger had already turned black and fallen off in the cold. 

When the line stopped with me next to enter, I told them I could feel the warm air from the house and the older woman said she’d predicted that we’d freeze to death within sight of the door. That’s true. She had, just as they joined the line 45 minutes earlier. And when the staff person gestured for the next two of us to enter, I offered them my spot so they wouldn’t have to separate. But no. They insisted that I go in because I had dressed so unwisely. Lol

It seems, from my years of estate sale experience, that there are a few reasons to hold a sale: death, divorce, downsizing/moving, and misfortune. A few weeks ago, my eldest and I went to a sale that was clearly the latter. Being, again, a nosy person, I researched the house and discovered that the owner was bankrupt. The house was being foreclosed. Perhaps the sale was a Girl In the Green Scarf attempt to recover some money. I was there for a specific purpose – a desk treadmill, which I got – but walking through the foreclosed house felt icky. The children’s fish were still swimming around in a small fish tank. Their school supplies were for sale on the $1-5 table. The house was full – hoarding full – of Disney merchandise that the Disney-mad purchasers fought over vehemently. My son was, mostly, keeping me company but surprisingly was able to purchase a brand new, very high resolution, monitor for $40. It wasn’t priced so we took it to the check-out station just as an uglier-than-usual fight was wrapping up. The woman in charge gave him a big discount on the monitor – which costs $500+ NIB (New In Box, as they say) – because we were nice to her and she was pretty stressed by the Disney hoards.

Mostly, people at estate sales are respectful and conflict-averse but occasionally there’s a fight. One time, when my daughter was with me, two women got into it over an ottoman. It wasn’t pretty, and the sale staff had to step in before it turned into something more awkward. Over an ottoman ….

The second sale I went to on Saturday was the result of a death. The woman was an antique lover with many lovely treasures that she clearly took exquisite care of but my favorite find was a retirement gift from 2000, a handmade booklet of all the things a single woman of a certain age can do once she has a lot of free time. It was sassy and saucy and charming. And clearly she appreciated it because she kept it for the rest of her life.

Much love.