Yesterday I drove 45 minutes north to the Big Suburb for a doctor appointment.  Her office is within a bike ride from where I lived from first through seventh grade, but of course nothing looks the same and I often get lost.

This time I didn’t, which made me feel smart.  And then I decided to find a consignment store I’d seen on the internet.  And then I was lost.  And more lost.  The traffic was tough, the roads narrow, construction one-lane roads every mile or so and I was so thirsty I drank what was left from a bottle of water (left over from the road trip) which rolled out from under the seat and hit the brake pedal the same time I did.

When I realized I’d gone too far, I was close to the airport (PVD is really in Warwick, not Providence) and near the consignment stores I’d frequented years ago with my two writing buddies).

I know you’re wondering why I would go to one of those stores after all the cleaning and sorting and trashing I’ve been doing since I arrived home.  Well, as I explained to a skeptical Banjo Man, I wanted to see what things were worth, what was selling, what was in fashion in Secondhand Land.  So I could know if my junk was, well, junk or not.

So I finally (finally!!) found one of the stores, a large place that had never disappointed me.  I still have the matching pink chenille bedspreads and the buffet I painted white.  My daughter took the painting I bought in 2000,  and two chairs I once hauled home ended up in Banjo Man’s office (and are now in my daughter’s living room).

Anyway…the store had changed.  It was packed–PACKED–with stuff.  The store had been divided into narrow aisles lined with furniture, dolls, vases, china, curtains, pictures, etc.  I made my way through it and bumped into a woman my age who had a “shock and awe” expression on her face.  At first I assumed this was because Rhode Islanders are moving out of the state in droves.  But these things didn’t fit the profile.

Then I went downstairs, which before had contained the used furniture (the good antiques had been kept on the main level) and saw the same stacked, dusty, smelly crowded stuff.  I should have left, but it was fascinating in its awfulness.

Usually women run secondhand stores.  Everything is clean.  Arranged nicely.  Potpourri sits in cut glass dishes on polished tables.  Linens are folded.

Not in this place.  I’d seen some aged 70+ men upstairs hauling stuff inside from the back of a truck.  That’s when I realized these guys cleaned out houses.  Homes of people who died.  The relatives snagged the good stuff and what was left was simply hauled away, to this shop.  To be piled up in rows.

So, I then started worrying about my own “when I’d dead” stuff.  How are my kids going to know the “good stuff”–like my crockery bowl from my grandmother in New Orleans, the only thing I have of hers–from things like the $1 pitcher–etched with a whaling ship–I picked up at a garage sale???  Do I photograph the special things and label the pictures:  this is whalebone, not plastic?  Do I stick masking tape explanations on the bottom of plates (“it’s really old, but your great-grandmother gave it to me when her neighbor was cleaning her house and didn’t want it” or a simple “NG”, meaning “no guilt” about donating it to the Salvation Army).  I really don’t know.

If any of my children are reading this, please chime in with an opinion.

Back to the store:  I excused myself to get past a young woman who was rifling through shelves of glass and putting her “treasures” in a pile on one of the 50 kitchen tables behind her.  She apologized for blocking the path and said, “I’m in my own world here.  I just love all of this stuff!”

Walk away, sweetheart.  Walk away before you end up with three French Provincial chairs, seven chenille bedspreads, nine sets of china, some old piece of mahogany furniture that will take you two weeks and six coats of white paint to make pretty and a house full of crap that your husband will beg to haul to the dump.

Instead I told her to have fun.  And saw three of my favorite kind of Pyrex pie plates, the ones with handles and little ruffles.  It was a no-brainer purchase, since I’d left all of my ruffled pie plates at the lake last summer.  And you can’t have too many.

The sad-looking man at the cash register counter told me no one bakes pies anymore.  His daughter is married, but doesn’t cook.  His wife and mother and grandmother all baked pies, and on Christmas and Thanksgiving there would be seven different kinds of pie and cheesecake, but those days are over.  Another sad-looking guy came over with some empty boxes and shook his head.  “Cheesecake.”

We all remembered cheesecake.   I swear, there was a moment of silence.

They were so pleased to meet someone who still bakes they gave me a discount.

I made my way to an unfamiliar Salvation Army store, parked in the wrong place three times before discovering the bins were through the chain link fence and around the corner, and unloaded bags of clothes, bedspreads, lamps, picture frames, books, kitchen stuff, etc.

After Banjo Man and I come home from the dump Saturday, I’m going to make a pumpkin pie.  Just for us.  Because we’re not dead yet.  And we have less stuff.