Other Peoples' Junk

     'Tis the season of the yard sale. Brightly colored signs on street corners beckoning the savvy bargain hunter to an address that promises The One Thing I've Always Needed are as prevalent during the summer in the Midwest as the buzzy, angry June bugs. I grew up in a microscopic town, so small that there were maybe two or three yard sales during the summer. Thank goodness for the Shop N' Save. 

     The Shop N' Save was a dank second-hand store that was in the bigger of the "Shelby" towns in Shelby County. It was right across from the library, right beside the sale barn in the town of Shelbina. The Shop N' Save was a mecca, an aromatic, mysterious and mesmerizing mecca of stuff that I didn't know I wanted or needed until I saw it. Grandma went there for books; Mom went there for these pieces of junk that she would take home and turn into these amazing pieces of furniture. I went there because they went. But I was soon sucked into the magic of the hunt. 

     "Junkin'" is what Mom called it, but it never occurred to me that it was junk. I didn't know where all of the items at the Shop N' Save came from but then again I didn't know where all of the items at the grocery store came from either. So when I talked Mom into buying me the Operation game missing the funny bone at the Shop N' Save for $1 as opposed to the one at Ben Franklin for $10, I asked her. 

     "Shop N' Save is full of other peoples' junk, Honey," she told me one day as I was helping her put a second coat of paint on a dining chair she had acquired for a dollar. "It's a second-hand store." I didn't tell her that I didn't know what she meant by "second-hand." I figured it meant something like there were a bunch of people who had been born with one hand and were selling off all of their stuff to buy a second hand. So they sold their belongings in hopes of gaining enough cash to pay for the operation. Thank goodness I figured it out before I started a telethon or something...

     The other day I was in a second hand store and there was a woman in there who looked as if she was in a constant state of pre-sneeze. She was telling her friend that she didn't "do" yard sales or thrifting or second-hand. "If it's not new, I don't want it..." she probably didn't mean to sound like a snob, but she did... Her friend told her just that and then asked her what exactly she thought her antiques were. "They are expensive is what they are," she said. "They have value because they are special and unique and because someone loved them and kept them in good shape." Her friend saw me listening in on their conversation and smiled at me when I rolled my eyes. 

     I'm packing up my house to move. I'm moving into a second-hand house. It's not brand new. I didn't build it. But it's new to me. It's bigger than our current house... we will have my brother with us in this new/used house. Most of the furniture that is going in it is second-hand. I thought I would be really excited about picking out new furniture, but quickly discovered that I have acquired the pieces that I have through the combining of several households. As the women that came before me passed away, their prized belongings were passed on: bubble glass, Fiestaware, hutch cabinets, hardrock maple living room sets, and various "pretties" like a candy bowl that looked like a chicken... 

     I am of the school of thought that values the second-hand lifestyle. I like the dinged up wood on a cheap used coffee table where kids used to play with race cars or Play-Doh. I love that the leather side chair smells like a mixture of cedar and tobacco, deep and rich. It doesn't bother me at all that second-hand dining room chairs will be covered with an old tablecloth that my grandmother was going to throw out after Christmas my freshman year of college but I saved it, knowing that I would use it someday. 

     When my mother passed away I went through most of her things. I made snap decisions to keep or get rid of. I tried to be ruthless and it was going well until I stumbled upon the locket that was worth nothing...

     The locket bore the initials of my great, great grandmother on my grandmother's side. It was copper, but plated with gold and there were little marks all over it. I took it to a local appraiser to see if she knew what the marks on the locket were. "This is priceless!" She smiled down at the piece with tears in her eyes. My heart leapt into my throat. I had found a treasure! A REAL treasure. 

     "As far as money goes, it's not worth much," she explained. "But these little marks on the back, notice how some of them are darker than others?" I nodded. "Those are teeth marks... she wore this locket and babies would sit on her lap and teethe on it. There's at least three generations of teeth marks here. They get darker as they get older." Mom had never shown it to me; I wonder if she forgot it was there. It had been under the bottom board of the jewelry box along with a delicate, beautiful little bitty white gown wrapped first in plastic wrap and then in tissue paper. I knew the dress; she was photographed in it on her one month birthday. There was no tag in the dress and the stitches were hand stitches, crooked and determined. Grandma's mom had made the dress by hand. I figured that the last set of teethmarks on the locket, the newest set, were probably Mom's.

     I found a shadow box on sale at Hobby Lobby and bought it. I put the locket and the dress in the shadow box and hung it on the wall of my now-old house. I just packed it away the other day to hang in my newer-old house. A new piece of art from two old treasures.

     I couldn't help but think of the unhappy woman I experienced earlier in the week as I held the shadow box. I know that she is unhappy because she just doesn't get it. Maybe she has never lost someone she loves; maybe she doesn't know what it is like to want for fine things and know they are out of your reach so you make them instead. Maybe she is just shallow, it could be that simple to explain. I feel sorry for her. She is out of place in this world. There's no such thing as truly brand new. Even if you buy it and have it sent to you, someone else has tested it for you. So really everything that decorates our lives is other peoples' junk. Even we are other peoples' junk, products of their idea of usefulness when it comes to us and categorized by the value that they place on us. We are second-hand spirits, all of us shaped by what we have absorbed through our experiences with others, all of us dinged up or scratched by encounters that will never go away. I choose to accept that about myself. I choose to be grateful for my teethmarks, my scratches, my defects and the spots of me that are rubbed smooth from love and infinite care. It could be worse than being other peoples' junk. You could be other peoples' trash.

Daddy's Girl

   I was a rarity during my childhood. In fact, I'm pretty sure, that in the 70's and 80's in my small town, there might have been only one other child whose parents were divorced to the extreme. Let me explain: divorced to the extreme means that one parent is completely absent from the life of the child... at least that's how I viewed it. I was one of those children. 

   My dad pulled the disappearing act when he found out my mother was pregnant with me, but that's 44 years in the past. I want to talk about today... I want to talk about the phenomenon of the absent father. So this blog post goes out to all of the men, young and old, who are choosing not to participate in their children's lives... I say choosing because that's what it is, truly. A choice. 

   I am a daddy's girl. Not in the traditional sense. I didn't force my daddy to help me put diapers on my baby dolls. I didn't make him have tea with me. I didn't ask him to teach me to shoot a bow and arrow. He didn't make my prom date come in and meet him and shake his hand. I didn't look lovingly into his eyes when he saw me for the first time in my wedding dress... I didn't hesitate to let go of his hand at the end of the aisle. I never saw the tears in his eyes when he held his first grandchild. I wasn't with him as he passed into the next life. But I am a daddy's girl... all the way.

   My first instinct is to never trust anyone, especially men. My husband must be part saint to put up with me... I have NO idea how to relate to men. I have no idea how to let a man love me. I have no idea how I am supposed to be treated by a man... go through college with that in your suitcase, ladies, and you will rapidly learn that the daddy deficit in your life left you coming up short in so many ways. I am a daddy's girl. 

   I don't know how to honor a man. I'm bad with authority... really bad. It's not easy to hold down a job when you have a problem like that. It only took me forty years to learn how to deal. There was no father to tactfully and delicately show me that the job of a man is not to control and contain but to protect and encourage. I am a daddy's girl.

   I never went down this road completely, but there were plenty of times that I started down the road where all of the stops are leaving little pieces of yourself with any man that will have you because you think that physicality is love. It's the stray dog syndrome: If you feed me your leftovers, I will stay because I don't know what it is like to be fully loved with freedom and compassion and respect. I am a daddy's girl. 

   That's not what this post is about, though. It has taken me 44 years to get to a place where I can forgive and move on... where I can find other examples to follow. And I had an amazing father-in-law who taught me so much by his examples of compassion and quiet strength that I consider myself semi-recovered. This post is to all of those "baby daddies" out there, especially young men who are creating an entire generation of daddy's girls just like me. I want to tell you what you are doing to that little person that you created. 

   You are teaching her that men are the enemy. You are teaching her that she is not worth the time of the man who helped create her. You are teaching her that you don't have to love or respect a woman to father a child. You are teaching her to not trust anyone. You are teaching her that men serve no purpose but to hurt and leave. You are teaching her that there is no one she can rely on, that she will have to do it all by herself, that she is nothing special, that she is your living, breathing, walking mistake. 

   It takes two to tango... that's what my mother always said. She would never say a bad thing about my father, never. But it doesn't take long to learn who is there and who is not.... who is taking care of you and who is not... who is dependable and who is not. And young man, middle-aged man, old man... if you fall into anyone of these categories then you are taking the life of your little girl. Your blatant disrespect and disregard for her mother, not matter what the circumstances, is interpreted by your little girl that you don't care about her and if you, the man who is half of her, doesn't care about her, then no one will and why should they. You will ultimately be the reason for her failed relationships, for her fear of trusting, for her desperate reaches for love. And the chances of you becoming a grandfather sooner than you planned are greatly increased because of you. Because if she can't get the right kind of love from you, she will confuse the wrong kind of love as something that is better than nothing. And realize, in that statement, you are the nothing. 

   And as if that isn't enough, let me leave you with one last thought: You are the physical representation of how she views and relates to her heavenly Father. Whether she trusts Him, rebels against Him, has a relationship with Him basically comes down to you. That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? And none of that crossed your mind when you looked longingly into the eyes of the mother of your child, someone else's daughter, and made your choice. 

   It may sound like I am pointing blame. I am. Believe me when I tell you that this is temperate to what I would say to a young woman who won't be a mother to her child. So I will leave you with this: You have two options when it comes to being a father: Be the joy that she has now, train her and show her how to love herself or you can be the pain that scrapes her as she tries to squeeze through life later. You need to decide now and take responsibility now for what you are doing or have done. She is your daughter, she is your flesh and blood; don't blame her for your immaturity and selfishness. Don't make her pay for it with every relationship that she tries to have. Don't turn her into THAT daddy's girl.