Treasure Trove
I get a real kick out of finding a treasure among the oddments of a second-hand shop or an Estate sale. It’s the fact that these things have been pre-loved. I love that they have their own story to tell and hearing it can be so humbling.
Take my wooden calendar clock with it’s linen cloth numbers and months in distinct black lettering. How anyone could have overlooked it for so long until I found it is beyond my comprehension. It has a rustic beauty about it. Simple, uncluttered in its design. It came from an Estate sale where the grand-children were emptying their grandmother’s house after her passing. I felt it had really been loved by its former owner, you could tell because it was so well cared for and it was in such good condition.
At the time, I felt very privileged to have secured its sale. I wondered just where its former owner had found it. I wondered what had caught her eye about it too. Then I realised that maybe we had both just liked it immediately and that’s all there was to it. Do you ever think that’s just it? Just because we like a thing. Odd that, isn’t it!
You know, it [my wooden calendar clock] has none of the shine and sparkle of the goods that modern-day marketeers have to drum up attention for. Yet, it just seems to have more charm, a fact that also seems to escape the less in-tune salesperson.
It had a ‘take-me-as-you-find-me or not at all’ air about it. I liked that. No need for screaming discounted bill boards or spruiking salesmen that intrude rudely by shoving their business cards into your hand as if it assured them of a decision to make the buy from them. I absolutely hate that. And it’s so presumptuous!
Do you have possessions that you brought or got handed down to you that you’ve forgotten to appreciate? Or that your appreciation needs rubbing to put the shine back on them again? Looking at this lovely little wooden calendar clock did that for me this morning. That and the framed cross-stitched iris my High School Art teacher Andy gifted to me.
Andy cross-stitched it in 1992. On the back, in her exquisite penmanship is a lovely inscription, “To dearest Penneylane, with many loving memories. ACS.” I’ll tell you about Andy in another entry. She lives just down the road from where Sal’s Granny lived.
For now, it’s time to get the bees wax out and to give my little clock calendar a shine and to send a prayer heavenward to Andy. To wordlessly mouthe “thinking of you” and feel warmed by her memory.
