yellow plastic whistle, absolutely perfect, and a tiny toy white bird that just needed to be scrubbed clean, and a lavender plastic butterfly, and—oh, all colors of clips like mini clothespins, and strings and strings of Mardi Gras beads, and I could keep going but I’d wear you out.
Just one more thing: week after week I kept finding jacks like the ones I used to play “ball and jacks” with when I was a girl, except these were plumper and more satisfying and all pretty colors of plastic, not dull metal. I brought them home till I had dozens. They would spin like tops and make a blur of circle color, and such colors I never saw before, even in a sunset. Young people these days don’t know what they have . Pinky orange periwinkle lilac jacks. I would sort them into rainbow caterpillars, or stack them on top of bottle caps like circus acrobats.
Circus is a good word to describe that thrift shop, the clowns who worked there and the midway stuff they sold. I could have bought Chinese pottery nose cleaners and Mexican sombreros and inflatable Elvises and Mount Rushmore paint-by-numbers and a stuffed moose head that sang “Unchained Melody,” but I didn’t. I was sticking to my rules I’d set for myself pretty much out of nowhere and not knowing why. Such as, the things I took home had to be of no cost, meaning no value, overlooked by people in general but cherished by me. Like the baby rattles and teething toys I found in the “FREE” box, barely used. Bright yellow ducks, little pink pretzels, little blue blunt-winged airplanes.
Back when Iris had died, within a year I gave away her clothes and toys. Then after my husband died, within the next couple of years I got rid of all the photos, all the Christmas tree ornaments, all the birthday knick-knacks, all the anniversary trinkets. Some people hang onto memories, but for some people, doing that just hurts worse.
That’s how I thought it was for me. Yet at that thrift shop freebies box, I couldn’t keep away from those tiny baby things. I took a few home—a powder-blue teething doughnut, bright plastic pretend keys on a ring, a circle of chewy plastic beads. I’d lay that one on the table and arrange the bottle caps inside it and try to see how many jacks I could balance on top before they all fell down like the children in the nursery rhyme, ashes, ashes.
Like Iris, dust to dust.
And my husband. Iris was gone, and I had given her ashes back to the sky where she belonged. That’s what a rainbow is, light through dust. But I had no idea what to do with my dead husband, so I kept him in the basement with the rest of the bottled preserves. Red beets and green pickles too old to use, and knew I ought to throw them all out, clean the jars and take them to the thrift shop. After Christmas, maybe.
The month before Christmas, I noticed, people brought in even more donations than usual. It was like they were clearing out junk to make space for more junk incoming. Anyway, along with morbidly obese teddy bears and frosted-glass candle holders and World’s Best Grandpa coffee mugs, the thrift shop filled up with artificial Christmas trees. I never took a second glance at any of them until one day I noticed a miserable-looking little tree, the size you’d put on a table, shoved under the clearance clothing rack.
“I haven’t seen anything like that before,” said one of the volunteers when I picked it up.
I said, “It’s a bottle-brush tree.”
“Huh?”
“When they first started, they used to make them like that. Straight branches like the brush you’d clean a baby’s bottle with.”
“Well, nobody’s going to want it. It’s ugly.”
I said, “I want it.”
I had no idea what I wanted it for. I already had something to scrub the john with.
Up until then, one rule of my nameless game was that my finds should be small enough to be stowed like a secret in my purse or my pocket. All of a sudden I was breaking that rule and I didn’t know why.
Of
Just one more thing: week after week I kept finding jacks like the ones I used to play “ball and jacks” with when I was a girl, except these were plumper and more satisfying and all pretty colors of plastic, not dull metal. I brought them home till I had dozens. They would spin like tops and make a blur of circle color, and such colors I never saw before, even in a sunset. Young people these days don’t know what they have . Pinky orange periwinkle lilac jacks. I would sort them into rainbow caterpillars, or stack them on top of bottle caps like circus acrobats.
Circus is a good word to describe that thrift shop, the clowns who worked there and the midway stuff they sold. I could have bought Chinese pottery nose cleaners and Mexican sombreros and inflatable Elvises and Mount Rushmore paint-by-numbers and a stuffed moose head that sang “Unchained Melody,” but I didn’t. I was sticking to my rules I’d set for myself pretty much out of nowhere and not knowing why. Such as, the things I took home had to be of no cost, meaning no value, overlooked by people in general but cherished by me. Like the baby rattles and teething toys I found in the “FREE” box, barely used. Bright yellow ducks, little pink pretzels, little blue blunt-winged airplanes.
Back when Iris had died, within a year I gave away her clothes and toys. Then after my husband died, within the next couple of years I got rid of all the photos, all the Christmas tree ornaments, all the birthday knick-knacks, all the anniversary trinkets. Some people hang onto memories, but for some people, doing that just hurts worse.
That’s how I thought it was for me. Yet at that thrift shop freebies box, I couldn’t keep away from those tiny baby things. I took a few home—a powder-blue teething doughnut, bright plastic pretend keys on a ring, a circle of chewy plastic beads. I’d lay that one on the table and arrange the bottle caps inside it and try to see how many jacks I could balance on top before they all fell down like the children in the nursery rhyme, ashes, ashes.
Like Iris, dust to dust.
And my husband. Iris was gone, and I had given her ashes back to the sky where she belonged. That’s what a rainbow is, light through dust. But I had no idea what to do with my dead husband, so I kept him in the basement with the rest of the bottled preserves. Red beets and green pickles too old to use, and knew I ought to throw them all out, clean the jars and take them to the thrift shop. After Christmas, maybe.
The month before Christmas, I noticed, people brought in even more donations than usual. It was like they were clearing out junk to make space for more junk incoming. Anyway, along with morbidly obese teddy bears and frosted-glass candle holders and World’s Best Grandpa coffee mugs, the thrift shop filled up with artificial Christmas trees. I never took a second glance at any of them until one day I noticed a miserable-looking little tree, the size you’d put on a table, shoved under the clearance clothing rack.
“I haven’t seen anything like that before,” said one of the volunteers when I picked it up.
I said, “It’s a bottle-brush tree.”
“Huh?”
“When they first started, they used to make them like that. Straight branches like the brush you’d clean a baby’s bottle with.”
“Well, nobody’s going to want it. It’s ugly.”
I said, “I want it.”
I had no idea what I wanted it for. I already had something to scrub the john with.
Up until then, one rule of my nameless game was that my finds should be small enough to be stowed like a secret in my purse or my pocket. All of a sudden I was breaking that rule and I didn’t know why.
Of
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