From that day on, I became devoted to stoop sales. Some of my favorite things —including the sundress I'm wearing today and the Winnie the Pooh car that Jay is pushing our daughter in —are from someone else's life. I find no joy in shopping at regular stores anymore. I've been known to break down in cranky tears by the checkout of Ikea. I'd love to say I'm trying to speak out against sweatshop conditions or conserve thread. But it's much more selfish than that. I love trying to sniff out a memory from a bud vase or a favorite song from a case of L.P.'s. The stains and broken switches, the bend in the knee of an old pair of jeans. Sometimes I just want to look at how many Mason jars one person can collect and imagine what they might've held. It's comforting to know that someone has breathed and laughed inside a sweater before me. That I am part of a continuum.
I have great respect for people who organize stoop sales. It must be an emotional way to spend your weekend. Arranging your history on a card table so strangers can snoop and evaluate. There's also a certain freedom and recklessness to putting a price tag on an ex's mix CD or "The Marx-Engels Reader" you never read in college and are finally ready to admit you never will.
I am very big on purging my own things. Every few weeks I drop off a load of clothes at the resale shop around the corner or cart a stack of books to the curb. The more I read about Buddhism while the stock market dips and flips, the more I feel like I have to practice non-attachment. Maybe it has to do with losing my parents at a young age. Maybe I can't bond with anyone or anything without also seeing us eventually separated. Whatever the cause, I know that once I love a scarf or shirt too dearly, it needs to find a new home. Even that green dress —which I turned into a blouse after deciding it made me look like a celery stalk —is long gone by now.
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