Every June, Burlington’s Lakeview Terrace hosts a street-wide yard sale. One of my longtime neighbors ably organizes the yearly pop-up bazaar. Sometime in May, he puts a “save the date” flyer in the door of every accessible dwelling on the three-block street. Closer to the event, he does it again, urging us to “Rake in some cash by clearing out your closets. Don’t forget to cruise the street to pick up some bargains while you’re at it.”
This Saturday, we’ll find out how many Lakeview residents heed his call. Soon to be revealed, too: Who is in the market for cast-offs? My neighbor advertises the sale, which doesn’t pretend to be the Brimfield Antique Flea Market; there’s an ad for it in this week’s paper and online in the newly redesigned classifieds.sevendaysvt.com. As long as my partner, Tim, and I have lived on Lakeview — since 2009 — it has drawn a steady stream of bargain hunters all day, rain or shine. Whether you’re buying, selling or browsing, shopping at this community market is really fun.
I want to sit out there with my stuff; every year the annual flyer renews my resolve to purge the house of things we no longer wear, use or need. There are certainly plenty of them, the detritus of decades.
We have thousands of books, most of which we won’t read again. There are closets filled with clothes I haven’t worn for years, including some that date back to high school. Also, an embarrassment of linen tablecloths, impractical shoes and scarves. Less marketable: school notebooks, newspaper clippings, old hiking gear and every letter I have ever received.
But when it comes to culling the collection, I just can’t do it. I’m not a hoarder, but I find it difficult to part with the items I have accumulated. They are the material evidence of history, the passage of time, memory holders. I equate shedding with forgetting, which is happening way too often these days.
In addition to my own ephemera, I have inherited that of my family members. My mom, dad and sister all predeceased me, so the loft space above my home office is stacked with their boxes and bins, containing my parents’ letters to each other, the immigration papers of my Italian grandparents and formerly Canadian father, my sister’s journals, my mother’s medical records, and black-and-white photographs of relatives I either never knew or no longer recognize.
As the sole survivor in my family, I feel like the steward of their stories. And their stuff. I keep telling myself: Someday I’ll unpack it all.
Last Saturday I went to a memorial service for a former boyfriend — the first of my past loves to die. After the program, atop Mount Philo, his sister presented a couple of us with items she’d found among his personal effects. I got a thick envelope with my name on it. Inside was everything I’d written to him over our three-year connection 40 years ago: letters, notes, photographs, a birthday card from my mom — the hard-copy remains of what for me was an important relationship.
Grateful, I brought the collection home and added it to the archive. If I ever find time to write more than 600 words in one sitting, you might read about it someday.