Saying Goodbye to the Stuff of Which Memories Are Made

Perhaps you stopped by our garage sale last Saturday. Maybe you bought something: my daughter’s first basketball uniform? One of my son’s Dr. Seuss books? Or maybe that poster of purple tulips that once hung over our bed?

Ours was one of the hundreds of yard sales in Los Angeles last weekend. Behind every one is surely a story. In my case, I also came to understand what my mother already knew: that even the most commonplace items can become vessels for precious memories.

I advertised our offering as a “three generations garage sale” and it included items that belonged to my husband and me, our children and my mother. I persuaded Mom to join us as a way to help her part with some of a lifetime’s worth of family possessions--she has complained that the sheer volume of stuff in her house has become burdensome.

I also knew the sale would prompt my husband and me to clean out years of accumulated junk.

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My mother and I are part of a family of champion savers. I used to tease Mom about her vast collection of empty glass jars, shelf upon shelf of jars, each matched with its lid. She insisted that the jars came in handy when she made soup, which she did superbly but never in a quantity approaching her storage capacity. Her jar collection has dwindled some but in its place are stacks of empty cottage cheese containers for leftovers. We knew we couldn’t sell these but we did set out the dozens of baskets she had, representing decades of flower arrangements and holiday gifts.

Books, old clothing, some of the five or six spatulas she has--I expected she’d produce bags of stuff she no longer needed. A few weeks ago, Mom mentioned a large bowl she planned to sell, a housewarming gift from 1958. The bowl’s ceramic glaze was cracked and she hadn’t used it for years. Yet the bowl did not materialize on Saturday.

I thought I knew what is worth saving until my daughter and I began to clean her shelves of sale items. She wanted to sell her preschool books, many of which had been her brother’s. I was the one who said no at first. How could we part with “One Fish, Two Fish” or “The Big Hungry Bear” or “Gimme Gultch”? The four of us knew the books by heart; collectively, they represented thousands of sweet bedtimes.

Over the years, I have stored special baby clothes and the best of my daughter’s dresses--including baby dresses I had once worn and my mother had saved. Those I would never sell. I even had a hard time parting with the ordinary and long-outgrown stuff: A toddler’s blue and pink flowered dress, and soccer uniforms representing, cumulatively, nine seasons of play for my son and daughter. Then there were the kids’ stuffed animals, consigned years ago to our attic. Many had names, each evoked memories.

I chided Mom for saving disposable party platters and for suggesting that someone might buy them. Later I sheepishly realized that I’d kept mine for a few years before tossing them.

Years ago, Mom turned over a yellowed portfolio with my childhood artwork. On the way home I swore I’d throw it out, but it still sits in my garage. So do most of my own children’s drawings.

The responsibility for safeguarding the true treasures from generations and moments past already overwhelms me. Memories of one generation cascade on top of another. An afghan my great-grandmother crocheted covers my bed. My grandmother’s engagement ring is on my finger. My grandfather’s engraved pocket watch, which was his father’s, is tucked away. My grandmother’s dishes, my father’s letters, my mother-in-law’s ceramics and beads, photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia, my children’s handprints in clay--it’s all too much.

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In the end, the books, stuffed animals, clothing, toys, bikes, posters and knickknacks Mom and I culled from our closets covered my front steps on Saturday morning. They lined the driveway and spilled onto the sidewalk.

People came in waves, starting before we officially opened for business. Please take these things, I thought as they picked through the piles. Turn them back into what they really are--just picture frames, kitchen utensils, silly books and used kid’s clothes.

A man in a pickup truck scooped up my daughter’s entire Barbie collection without even looking through it. I hesitated for a moment. Should I show him the handmade outfits? Or how we coifed Barbie and Skipper?

A mother and her little girl carefully picked through the clothing, settling on two of my daughter’s old dresses. They will look just as pretty on her.

A family with three young boys took my son’s shorts, soccer shirts, an old bedspread Mom had and several toys.

An older couple bought one of the bikes for their granddaughter. They surely anticipate the girl’s delight when she rides without training wheels for the first time.

The stuff is all gone now; what we didn’t sell, my son and I took immediately to the thrift shop. Last Saturday, I knew that I couldn’t hesitate. Still, I now see my future and it is very cluttered.