Saturday, we held our first yard sale in four years.

I cleaned out the garage (mostly “junque”). We sifted through boxes in the basement (cast-off treasures). My daughters lightened the load on the bookshelves and in the DVD cabinets.

Most of what we had to sell were kids’ things…my daughters’ toys accumulated since we moved into our house almost eight years ago, a few décor items and the collection of my mother’s dolls that I hadn’t been ready to part with since her death six years before the last garage sale.

I should have been ecstatic to see stuff that had taken up room in our house going to a new home where it would be loved anew. In part, I was. But parting with some of the items made me wistful – certainly more so than they were. It felt as if I were parting with the flotsam and jetsam of my daughters’ childhood.

The Build-a-Bears born of Birthday Party Adventures went to the daughters of a man covered head-to-toe in tattoos. Our collection of Barbie DVDs went to a family whose native language was Spanish. The young girl who bargained for the Hula Dancer I’d brought back from Hawaii for my Mother assured me she’d take good care of the doll. This would be the 48^th in her collection. Three sets of Build-a-Bear clothing went to a young disabled woman who had just bought a new bear that morning. I hoped the young girl whose family bought the doll house would enjoy it as much as my daughters had.

It helped to learn something of the family inheriting our treasures. Part of the reason Pixar’s Toy Story was so popular is that the creators understood the bond between humans and toys, even if they flipped the perspective.

My daughters are twelve-going-on-sixteen now. They’re no longer children, but not quite women. When I shop, I find myself avoiding some aisles in department stores because they transport me to a land to which I can never return with them…a land filled with the enchantment of Hide-and-Seek, Play Doh, Candyland and Make-believe. I know new magic lies ahead, but the past is more easily remembered than the future, imagined.

There are toys on those store shelves that I knew their younger selves would have adored, toys that I’d always intended to buy “the next year,” toys they’d have loved that never made their way into our budget.

The last time we shopped, I asked them if they would have liked it if I bought a particular “cute” lunch box for them, or if they’d be embarrassed to tote it in front of their friends. They just smiled. I interpreted those enigmatic smile.

“I guess that means you’d be happy that I thought to buy it for you but you’d be embarrassed to use it in front of your friends?”

“Yeah, that’s it Mom.”

Good thing I’m a mind-reader.

 

 

Written in summer 2012.