I'm a sucker for a story.
I like the way our cottage crumbles around us, shifting and creaking with self-consciousness. I like walking creaky floors and listening for words buried beneath carpet covering primitive floors. I like staring out the window into old trees and thinking about the others who have studied the branches overhead.
Digging around in the crafting bin at Goodwill, I found some treasures.
A stack of bias tape - pink, taupe, white. Whose sewing box did these come from? What project did she have in mind? Did someone else harvest the best of her stash and only these J. & P. Coats packages were tossed to the Junk It Pile?
A sealed bag with several skeins of DMC floss in blues and greens. I bought it for the threads, knowing I wouldn't do the cross stitch runners, but I was a little bit delighted when I opened the bag and found someone had started the runners and then surrendered the whole project to the donation bin. I wonder how long it sat waiting and unfinished. I like running my fingers over the stranger's stitches.
A circle tin made of shiny plastic, covered with a tuft of once-gold satin - a handy place for sticking wayward needles and pins. Inside, half a dozen thimbles, hollow and lonely for use. Two are from the campaign trail. Re-Elect Ralph Adair County Commissioner. I do a little digging and as it turns out, Mr. Adair found himself re-elected as County Commissioner of Oklahoma County time and again - from 1953 to 1982. That's a long time of service to the Sooner State. Must have been the thimbles.
I'm wearing a tank top I found at Goodwill as I sit here writing. I lose my mind a little bit in there. All those things, all those stories. Someone boxed them up and hauled them off.
It's all just stuff, and I have to employ much self-discipline to keep from carting more stuff home when we've spent so much time being rallying around the Stuff! Out! war cry. It's just so tempting though, the Goodwill.
A monument to abandonment.
A wink at redemption.
