Yard Sale

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. Wes is in Israel and it's been a little crazy with two kids! We've been staying with family this week to keep me somewhat sane. My parents have done some remodeling and mom was cleaning out so we had a big yard sale. For the most part it was your typical yard sale including things from my mom, my grandmother, me and a few other people.

Some stuff was really old...we sold our favorite green hanging lamp from my Mawmaw's stuff. That was sad. My brother always loved that crazy 1955 thing and even hung it in his college apartment. Some wasn't that old, but odd that we still had it...like the wall paper remnents my mom saved for the last 20 years! That stuff didn't sell, but who would put it up in their house now I ask. My aunt had found a few things of my other grandmother's and gave it to us recently, but mom didn't want any of it and I couldn't see where I would put it other than the attic.

One thing was an old metal bread box. It was neat, but what am I going to do with that and it was all rusted. I got to thinking I didn't have anything I knew of from that grandmother aka Big Mama. I thought I NEED something from her as a memory. But later the best kind of thing happened. The bread box sold and just as I was about to mourn the item I could have saved a lady came to the yard sale.

This was an African American woman that I didn't know well from my small hometown, but she knew my dad. She started talking to him about how she missed my aunt (dad's older sister who died in 1994) and my grandmother (she died 9 months after my aunt). She talked about how my grandmother could take little of nothing to make something and would always say "come on in and eat" inviting her friends to their humble home on Main Street.

I savored that conversation because I never really knew Big Mama. She didn't die until I was 17, but 16 of those years she was in a nursing home and 10 or more of those years she was not responsive to much of anything because of strokes. I just remember going to visit her around the age of 6, 7, 8 and my brother and I would put on puppet shows with the homemade dolls in her room. She would laugh hysterically at us! Now I felt like I knew something else about her and it wasn't told to me by family, but a life she impacted in the community. I hope to be that kind of person someday. :)

Now I don't need that bread box to remember Big Mama. I'll just remember to be like her in sharing the bread of life and be hospitable no matter how much or how little I have to share.

I did remember later that I have a quilt Big Mama made. Well she started it, but only had the patches put together. My Aunt Venida (dad's sister) had later taken it to be finished by someone and gave it to me. Aunt Venida was one of my favorites. She was old enough to be my grandmother since she was 17 years older than dad. We had a great relationship and I really miss her. When the lady at the yard sale said she knew Venida for years my dad said "That's my sister." He sounded just like Taylor does when he exclaims that Lilly is his sister. It was the sweetest thing to me to hear dad was still so proud to claim her as his sister. They were so close even with her being so much older than him. I hope and pray that Taylor and Lilly have that kind of relationship.