...I just wonder what the story this little green cabinet would tell.
I was on my way to Oak Grove back before Christmas and passed by a yard sale in progress on the way. I literally drove to the next place I could turn around safety and went back to check it out! There she was...standing in the driveway, looking alone, wanting someone to take her home. I couldn't just leave her behind. So, I paid the price on her tag and loaded her up. I asked her "Where have you been;?" She politely told me she had once belonged to a young woman who used her to hold kitchenwares. She went on to say, "Times were hard and money was scarce, so people used what they had." I asked were her coat of green came from and she told me that someone gave it to her. I can remember when I was a young bride with few dollars to pay the rent, much less buy a new coat. I told her about when my husband and I rented a little green shack across from The University of N. Alabama in Florence. It was so tiny and lacked of any redeeming qualities, like kitchen cabinets. It had none, zip-O, notta! So, we put concrete blocks and boards up in the kitchen to hold my dishes, canned goods and pots. One thing I do remember, though, is how happy we were. I mean, we didn't have cable, so there was no television to watch. We played cards and "air quitar" before Guitar Hero was even thought of. Our son was a baby, barely walking at the time, and we would sit in the floor of the livingroom, which was buckled in the middle so it felt like some kind of a "fun house" at the carnival, and play with him. Life was a struggle for a while, but it was what it was and we made it through the tough times together.
So, I asked where the young woman was now and the little green cabinet told me that the lady had died a year or so back from cancer and that her daughter had taken her into her tiny home so that she wouldn't be tossed to the side of the road for the trash to pick up. She told me of the young couple that lived in the home, how they too had a small baby girl who was a joy to them and her grandparents. When I asked her how she ended up in the drive with a for sale sign stuck to her chest, she said that the couple wanted to make a little money to buy Christmas for their baby, so they sacrificed her to the cause.
How many times have I done just that. We all have I suppose. There was alot of "lean years" when we didn't even have money to buy a Christmas tree, but, Christmas came anyhow. I wish I could have all the dollars back that I have spent on crazy stuff that eventually ended up in a yard sale. I could probably provide Christmas for someone else or spend it on my aged parents a caregiver.
I promised the little green cabinet that I would give her a home. I said that she could hold my Fiesta platters and casseroles, my treasured set of Fiesta tea pitchers and those little blue bowls I once gave to my husbands mama for Christmas years ago. I promised not to change her coat of green, that she had earned it proudly. Oh, how happy she stands now in my kitchen. And we both have made a new friend!
