Today, I cried for a woman I never met, whose name I never learned.
Today, I drove two blocks to an estate sale. Since it was the second day, everything was 25% off. I walked into the house which used to be alive, but now sat still and silent. I asked the woman at the cash box if the owners had died. “Yes,” was the response. She died recently, her husband several years earlier. They had no children. Everything in the home was being sold, then the house would be put up for sale.
I walked through each room, listening and looking for her story. On tables in each room rested the heritage of days long past. Silver salvers and serving dishes, tarnished from disuse, pleaded to be returned to the times of their polished glory. I could see them proudly offering sliced roast beef, creamed potatoes and glazed carrots on a fine linen tablecloth covering the French Provincial table (table, two leaves, and four chairs could be mine for $200).
Eight black fine China dinner plates rimmed with gold haughtily sat aloof from the everyday dishes. “Remember those dinners we’ve seen?” they asked each other. “The men in suits and the women in the latest styles with matching heels. And always cloth napkins captured in silver napkin rings.” I felt the elegance and envisioned pickles, olives, carrots and celery adorning the cut glass hors d’oeuvre plates and bowls.
Walking into the bathroom, I realized the estate sale included everything. Over-the-counter medications and Ben-Gay were lined up next to a box of industrial toe nail clippers. Soaps and cleaning products sat along with partially used bottles of lotion and a can of shaving cream.
To my right, I spied bathrobes and outdated dresses, belts and blouse hanging in the closet. Half-a-dozen pairs of non-descript shoes lay bunched in a corner. They were all quiet and lifeless.
On my left was the guest room, where a double bed stripped of sheets and character filled the middle of the room. By the window, I spied the sewing machine, where she had created fashions and looked into her backyard. Stacks of projects were piled beside the machine in easy reach. I could feel the satisfaction she must have experienced in the orderly assemblage of needles, fabric and thread which lay waiting in the wings.
I wandered back through the living/dining area where the china cupboard caught my eye. Sets of wine glasses, brandy snifters, and cordial glasses waited expectantly for a cocktail party that wasn’t happening. The layers of dust told me that they had been waiting for years, perhaps since the man of the house had died.
In the kitchen, spread out on the stove were the pots and pans which fill every home. An indoor grill for the stove top remained in its box (a bargain for $8, today only $6). A woman half my age excitedly grabbed up a set of four Pyrex bowls: yellow, green, red and blue in size order. As she pointed out the paint, fading from use, I told her I had a set just like it at home that had belonged to my mother, a wedding gift in 1946. While she proudly carried her prize to the front room, I saw the yellow bowl heaped with Mom’s homemade spaghetti sauce, the green bowl filled with baked macaroni and cheese that had to be soaked for an hour to get clean, and the small blue one holding with beaten eggs ready to add to some other ingredients. I didn’t remember a red bowl ever being part of Mom’s set, probably broken in the early days of her learning to cook.
Looking out the window above the sink, I saw the hand-made, two-tiered stand built to accommodate at least a dozen big containers of plants. Only two or three remained, each lovingly cared for and thriving. I envied her green thumb.
Informal, mismatched cups and glasses, ready for a drink from the faucet or a fresh cup of coffee, were displayed on the small counter. How had she survived with so little cabinet space? I was surprised to see more of the elegant silver, china and cut glass than ordinary, casual dishes and glassware. The kitchen and dining room segregated the fine and common. Mom and Dad’s home had been arranged the same way. Both the elegant, formal glassware that preened in the china cabinet and the good china hidden away for special occasions in the maple hutch lived in the formal dining room. The riff-raff dishes and glasses formed a motley crew in the crowded kitchen cabinets.
Beneath the peninsula that separated the kitchen from the family room were several shelves that held a variety of half-full and half-empty bottles of alcohol. Sherry, whiskey and other varieties of wines and liquor stood in the open for easy access and selection. A bevy of shot glasses, haling from sporting events and vacations spots were on display next to the beverages. All that was missing was a cocktail shaker.
The family room nestled cozily around the brick fireplace. I could envision Christmas stockings awaiting Santa’s arrival hanging from the mantle, above which proudly hung a framed drawing of a golf course. A beige sleeper sofa and love seat sat on an even more bland shade of aging beige carpet. Above the sofa were framed drawings from another golf course and a golf tournament souvenir portrait. Across from the couch, beside the television, were three shelves filled with a collection of bunnies, including a beaded one elegantly displayed in a blue velvet-lined display case.
I meandered into the screened porch where the Christmas tree and ornaments beckoned collectors. I sat in one of the chairs to look at the games sitting on a shelf. I almost yielded to my desire to finally own “Easy Money,” which I had wanted as a child. A French card game centered on driving called “Mille Bornes” also tempted me. My game had long ago disappeared during one of my many moves. I resisted buying either. Games need at least two people to play.
She must have slept in one of the twin beds in the back bedroom which was now stacked with sheets, spreads, and blankets. He had slept in the other. The room reminded me of “I Love Lucy” or “Ozzie and Harriet,” a time when all couples, at least on television, slept separately. Although there were no men’s clothing in the closet, the shelf held a dozen or more caps with a dozen or more logos on them. Perhaps she had kept them as a physical memory of her husband. Other than a decoration made of woven, woody vines, the walls were bare.
The third bedroom revealed that she had entered the computer age. A desktop computer had occupied the corner of the desk and a printer waited for action on a small table caddy-corner from it. A bookcase held books on cooking, sewing and gardening, although nothing looked recent.
I returned to the living room and sat on the love seat which proved just soft enough to be comfortable. As I gazed around, I saw a cardboard box filled with dozens of small photo albums, each large enough for a roll of film. On top laid another, larger album. I was going to peek into one of the smaller albums, but groups of three or four were bound together with rubber bands. I didn’t look in the big one. I suddenly felt like that act would have been too invasive of her privacy. On another table were two old albums, the kind with black pages and glued-in corners to hold the black and white pictures of decades long ago, probably filled with photographs of their youth and long-dead family.
I walked out the front door, empty handed except for a first printing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” a gift for a friend. I stood and looked around at a house and yard that had been loved and cared for that was now just a house and yard waiting for a new family, a new infusion of life and spirit.
Sitting in my car, I felt sadness well-up inside me. This woman, unnamed and unknown to me, was being spirited away piece by piece. What will happen to all that is left unsold? Does anyone use silver serving bowls or cut-glass hors d’oeuvre dishes anymore? What will happen to the photo albums? Will they be taken to the dump and deposited unceremoniously in a landfill?
Who remembers this woman? What made her unique? Was she happy-go-lucky, serious and disciplined, haughty or carefree? Was she kind and generous? Did she have many friends who are now grieving her absence or was she lonely, as dated and out-of-touch as her silver sipping cups? Did she die in pain or peacefully slip away? At the end, was she surrounded by friends in her own bed or alone in a strange hospital room?
Who will remember this woman? Will anyone tell her stories? When her name is mentioned will people smile or shrug.
I wonder. I think about my house, my belonging, my life. And I cry.