The Estate Sale

Another chapter in my life has come to an end – the closing up of my dear grandmother’s house. This past weekend we held Big Red’s estate sale and it wasn’t at all what I expected. I was dreading having strangers in her home picking through her things, but amazingly it turned into a nice experience.

A funny thing happened. A lot of people came to the sale and just stayed – they stayed to hear about Big Red. Who was this woman who quilted and tatted and knitted and loved books and did calligraphy and had a green thumb and collected stamps and made porcelain dolls and painted ceramics and baked bread and taught school and raised ten children and lived to 104 years old and had 104 progeny and collected rocks and pottery shards and driftwood and loved cowboy lore and poetry and owned every Weight Watcher cookbook and had a great record collection and costumes and vintage hats and an aquarium for a boa constrictor? Who was this woman?

And, what a great house. Yes, I can see that it hasn’t been updated since 1953, but what a great vibe it has. Good bones. I’ve never seen a bathroom (kitchen, living room) this large. I love the original linoleum. She raised how many kids here?

As the day progressed the estate sale bargain hunters became our new friends. As we told the history of the antique trunks and the dining room table we found the people we wanted to be the new owners our grandmother’s things. The young couple who bought the claw-foot iron bathtub and so many books, the university graduate student and her husband who came back on the second day and were thrilled to take home the Robert Wood print for half price and the man who bought the antique sewing machine because his family had one just like it that had been lost in a fire.

While we told the story of our Big Red and sold the household goods already picked over by her family and friends we silently wished for the love, happiness and good karma certainly contained within her “stuff” to follow their new owners. I think Big Red would have been pleased.