Useless Happiness
by Robert P. Barsanti
Our weekend of spring arrived over Father's Day. The fog cleared, the air warmed into the seventies and a new summer rose from the moors and marshes. The dogwoods, the irises, the peonies; all of the flowers and shrubs that wait until it is truly safe to flower have all emerged. On that Saturday, when the sky was blue and the fog remained on the horizon, the boys and I went yardsaling.
Like the harbor, a man's life has tides. Not long ago, I was at full flood. I took in chairs, sheets, mattresses, artwork, toys, and even that wobbly lamp that never worked. I needed stuff for my life and stuff arrived. The season, and the moon, have moved and I am now at full ebb. Where I once did not own a sofa, I now have three or four, depending on who is counting. My four simple plates have multiplied into collections of dishware. Even the books wash among my feet. So, I look for ways to send things back into the current.
Nonetheless, the boys and I were driving from yard to yard on Saturday; I am a sucker for a good story and a better bargain, and I found both on Windy Way. Arrayed on two card tables, an eight setting collection of hand-painted china was on sale for a quarter a plate. Dinner plates, dessert plates, tea cups and saucers, pickle dishes, and whole host of nameless pieces were lined up on two bridge tables. They had been expensive and they had been stylish and, as it was twelve-thirty in the afternoon, the former bride offered me the entire collection for ten dollars.
She didn't want to take it to the dump. Who would? What ever the story had been, she didn't want to end it in shards and fragments. Sometime in the happy past, the pattern had been selected, the pieces chosen, the collection assembled by the guests, and then presented on a wonderful table. And perhaps there had been meals. And perhaps there had been celebrations, but that all ended in lawyers and initialed pages. Now, she waited for that next chapter to begin. As I was the last customer, she wanted that last chapter to continue with me.
Were I more skilled at eBay or more likely to feed a Christmas dinner to eight people (including Martha Stewart and Laura Ashley), I might have taken her up on her offer.
I have collected my own set of totems and talismans over the years. My family museum has dozens of Lego sets, books of photographs, and the odd shrunken t-shirt. The bright, yellow Lego helicopter floats like a buoy on the surface of my memory. I haul the line up and have Christmas morning before me again, in all its hopping, happy power. Other totems don't recall the past, but plan the future. So it is with wedding presents. Eight settings of china imagine eight people eating turkey, many of whom aren't yet manifest at the wedding reception. Be they plates or Lego sea monsters, our things aren't just things; they are the props for our stories.
And we don't want the stories to end. We want to hold them and resurrect them. If the Mister has left us for his secretary, we want to serve the dogs Alpo out of the wedding gifts. If he comes back, we want to serve a new dinner on them (or throw them at his head). At the very worst, we want someone else to get the pleasure from these that we couldn't get. No one wants the dishes—and the story—to just end. No one wants to just give it all up.
However, I did not buy the china I watched the young woman on Windy Way when she goes back to her folding chair. Ringless, barefoot, and worried, she waits for the next car.
The story would not continue with me. And maybe the story should just end. The marriage may have begun in hope, but it ended in failure. And all of that hand-painted china just keeps muttering and whining, someone should shut it up in long arcing frisbee tosses.
The southwest wind tells me it is spring and the island isn't interested in yesterday. It is all about tomorrow. Spring wants us to shatter the dishes. Spring wants a clean start, without the baggage and the corpse of yesterday dragging behind us.
This is the secret that sets the stars apart. This is the secret that everyone knows and no one can tell. The tide will turn again. Love will land on her chest like a water ballon. Soaking wet, her love will once again bloom into sheets and pillows, cups and saucers. There will be another who will hold her heart in his heart, they will move into their own private little room, and summer will follow spring.
In the safety of that room, in that endless nocturnal conversation of love, this yard sale will become a funny little story, of how she tried to sell everything after the divorce, and she couldn't give the dishes away. The trouble and pain will get moved into a storage shed labeled "What I did before." There will still be troubles and pain. The world spins its acids and its bases, which will slowly eat away the sand outside their little room.
This time, however, will be different. This time, there will be no one to watch and to judge. This time, there will be nothing to save and to preserve. This time there will be nothing to mark with masking tape and sell for a quarter. This time, the only ceremony will be their own, their only walls will be their backs and their only gift will be long afternoons of useless happiness.
