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It was only a garage sale, for Pete’s sake. So, what are the tears about?
I sit at home this morning with wet eyes. I’m trying to clean up the usual accumulation on my desk, but instead I’m crying. Why? Because I’m sifting through the photos from last weekend on my phone. My husband and I were at my daughter’s home, out-of-state, for her garage sale.
Get it? Her garage sale. Not mine. Not mine to cry over, at least.
But here’s the thing. I helped set up her sale and then hung out with her for two warm and sunny days on lawn chairs, sipping diet pop, waiting for the traffic. Prime bonding time. And as I sat scanning the piles of toddler clothes for sale, the swift passage of time became a sudden reality. Had it really been forty years since my own garage sales with her toddler clothes?
I’ve been having this aging thing lately. You know the kind where you see your future years as fewer than your past. Could be I live another twenty-four years and die at ninety-five like my mother, or I could be listed any day now on the obituary pages like many others in their seventies.
One of my mottos as I age is to find joy in every day. My joy today is in memories of helping my daughter host her garage sale, even though those memories are graced with a few tears.
Write Along with Me 
yep Lois, know what you mean. I’m past the surprise of being old and the time perspective is more normal to me now, but it is a passage. I often think that time is an accordian!!
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Thanks, Sandy. It’s feels good to be understood in this “accordion-ed” life. Like the analogy too.
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Lois:
I am there with you. Unexpected things can bring moisture to my eyes as I age. I don’t think aging is common place for me as yet. Maybe it’s part denial. So often I am just taken aback with the reality my time is becoming shorter. And the revelation that what was so precious to me long ago and is no more catches me unaware. That’s when the tears start.
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It could be denial! I’ve had to break through denial with my health stuff as of late. It’s made me more aware of my vulnerability. But I”m sure we’ll alwasy soldier on!
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You brought back those bitter-sweet memories for me, too. My first, and I hope last, garage sale took place seven years ago in River Forest, IL when everything accumulated over almost 40 years was dissolved. It felt great to shed all those layers, but so very sad, too.
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I understand! When we moved to the city eight years ago and downsized our suburban belongings, my daughter-in-law gve me a helpful hint: to take photos of things for a memory book. I have those photos somewhere, and some day I’ll find them, but just knowing I have them brings me comfort.
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Lois, I LOVED your close with, “One of my mottos as I age is to find joy in every day. My joy today is in memories of helping my daughter host her garage sale, even though those memories are graced with a few tears.”
Isn’t that the truth and that there are more years behind us than thee are ahead of us-unless medical science has a freak accident within the next 5 years!
Making ‘hay’ or something positive out of even the most negative days; why there’s an art! I look at pictures of my youth in Chicaago-land and the triathlons and I become so verklempt!. Who was it, Bonnie Tyler (who couldn’t have been more than 25 at the time, sang, “every now and then I get a little bit terrified that the best of all the years have gone by.” Total Eclipse of the Heart
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That time thing can be unnerving, but I do find do many blessings each day and I know I would not like to start life over! Thanks, Annie, for your thoughts
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The thoughts of ‘do-overs’ would be nice; if I can have the wisdom I have know and don’t need to go to the ‘school of hard knocks:’ That’s a lot of conditions that I put on a ‘relife’ (IGod, that sounds like I’m 6 feet under, already!!)
With the run of luck that I’ve been having lately, I’ll be RETURNED to this planet as a RAT to do my time over. Did you ever see the movie, Defending Your Life? Hysterical and thought provoking with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks.
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No, I didn’t see that movie. I should put it on my ever-growing list of things to do because I like Meryl Streep. And please don’t come back as a rat! No do overs here!
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Nice writing. I have also been going through some morbid thoughts – probably because I’ll be turning 69 in a few days. Knowing we may not live much longer becomes a fact of life at some point and thinking about it doesn’t feel morbid – it feels real. I find it interesting what kinds of things trigger tears. Garage sales do that to me – but not because of memories. I just hate garage sales. 😀
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Thanks, Pat, for the nice words. Too bad you don’t like garage sales–they can be such fun. My daughter and I have given several over the years, starting when she was young and helping me line up stuff on the driveway. And, yes, gotta keep those morbid thoughts at bay. Too much good in each day to shrivel away!
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