The leaves on the old maple tree I have loved since the first time I climbed its branches more than 40 years ago had transformed into extraordinarily radiant shades of red and yellow this year. I took a deep breath of the crisp, invigorating fall air, then hammered the signpost into the ground.
Yard Sale
Saturday 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
As I stepped back to view the sign, wondering how we were going to make it through tomorrow, I heard Mrs. MacKenzie’s voice, plain as day: “Life does not put things in front of you that you can’t handle.” Instinctively, I looked to see if she was standing at the front door, knowing full well that was impossible. “Sometimes I’ve believed in six impossible things before breakfast,” came to me as her response to my thoughts.
In that moment, I wondered if I’d fallen down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of my own. Some things in life, however, can never be explained, and so I headed back up the walkway and into the old brick house, where I found Julia sitting on a familiar black and brass trunk in the middle of the family room, surrounded by stacks of boxes we had packed earlier that week for her to take home.
“Hey, Jules, is that the treasure chest?”
“Later,” she smiled, knowing I would get lost in time if we dared open it now. “Let’s finish the kitchen.”
Clearing out the contents of one’s family home isn’t easy for many children; yet I knew this past week had been particularly painful for Julia. I knew because I had been her best friend since first grade. Not always the closest, but always the best. For the last 25 years, we had lived on opposite coasts, but geographical distance could never break the lifelong bond formed here way back when. What I hadn’t really been prepared for was how painful this would be for me.
Julia had been an only child, though not by choice, and as the years passed, Dr. and Mrs. MacKenzie unofficially “adopted” me as the second child they would never have, loving me and advising me as their own, especially after my own father was tragically killed in an accident, and Alzheimer’s took my mother when I was barely in my 20s. The MacKenzies were always there for Jules, and they had always been there for me.
Model American parents, Dr. and Mrs. MacKenzie believed in the “think positive” counsel of Norman Vincent Peale and passed that on, forever encouraging us to trust. “Remember, anything is possible,” Mrs. MacKenzie would always remind us. They discovered universal truths in old adages and always offered just the right bits of wisdom in times of turmoil and uncertainty. “Life,” as Dr. MacKenzie was fond of saying, “is conspiring in your favor.”
But, as they also taught us, time marches on. A little more than two years ago, Dr. MacKenzie passed away. Then just two months ago, Mrs. MacKenzie lost her battle to breast cancer.
Now, together again, Julia and I were doing a lot more than sorting through stuff. We were sharing another turning point, saying good-bye to what had always been our shelter from the storms of life, and to her parents, who had made it so.
We managed to quickly separate out the heirloom pieces that Julia would have shipped to her home in New York, as well the items the MacKenzies had bequeathed to me, and spent the rest of the week going through cabinets and drawers, cubbyholes, the basement and attic, finding no small amount of treasures . . . old LIFE, LOOK, and The Saturday Evening Post magazines . . . a very cool, shiny-like-new Hamilton Beach blender . . . hand-crocheted doilies beyond imagination . . . Dr. MacKenzie’s set of Craftsman tools . . . Jules’ favorite stuffed teddy bear . . . until finally the last of it was sorted and boxed or marked “yard sale” or “Goodwill.”
When all was done, we gravitated back to the family room, out of need, as much as habit. For a few long minutes, we just sat on the floor, in silence, leaning against the big black and brass trunk. So much of our childhood had been lived in this house, and especially in this room. Then, the finality of it all hit us both, and we let the tears flow.
“We grew up here,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Watched President Kennedy’s funeral in here,” Julia said softly.
“Met the Beatles on ‘Ed Sullivan’ here,” I remembered.
“Celebrated our Sweet 16 birthdays here.” “Dreamed our dreams here.”
We turned around and opened the latch of the trunk. The smell of cedar drifted up. Inside, we found the treasure — photo albums. We pulled out the oversized, gold-trimmed brown album we knew contained photos from our teenage years and sat down to flash back through the times of our lives.
Every important moment it seemed was documented inside . . . the silly picture Dr. MacKenzie had taken of Jules and me in our Beatle wigs “playing” broom guitars . . . our graduation day pictures from grade school . . . junior high . . . high school and college . . . snapshots of us in our prom dresses, complete with those unwieldy hand corsages . . . the picture I took of the video image on the television when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon . . . the Mustang convertible we used to drive to school . . . the friends . . . the boyfriends. We stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, reliving the moments of our lives, crying, laughing, remembering, and realizing that life is what happened while we were busy making other plans, as one of the minstrels of our generation had put it.
“Before you got here last week, I spent some time with the family who bought the house,” Julia said, as we were getting ready to finally call it a day. “They’ve got two daughters. The younger one reminded me of you — the first thing she did was climb up into the old maple tree.”
The next morning came early and so did the first of the bargain hunters.
“Okay, everything is outside now, except these boxes, which are going with you, right?” I asked Julia, pointing to the last stack of boxes in the family room.
“Nah, that stuff can go, too,” Julia said calmly. “I’ve realized over the last few days that Mom and Dad — and that Italian novelist, Cesare Pavese — were right. We don’t remember days, we remember moments. And our moments are really the only important things, the only things that can’t be replaced,” she added, opening the big black and brass trunk and pulling out the gold-trimmed brown photo album. “Would you take care of this for us?” she asked, handing me the album.
“Jules . . . yes,” was all I could muster right then. I wiped the tears from my eyes, and went to place the album in my suitcase.
Then, we each picked up one of the last few boxes and headed out to the front yard. “Everything goes,” Jules announced to the folks wandering around the lawn. Turning to me, she added with a smile: “Everything but the photographs.”
Indeed, those were our “moments,” never to be sold.
Courtesy of Lifetouch
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