Life is magical for so many reasons. My heart is throbbing from happiness lately, so much that I have a hard time shutting up about it. But I do have one story to share with you in particular. Pull up a chair and grab some coffee or sweet tea. This should only take a couple of minutes, and I wish I could give you a hug afterward.
Last Saturday, as we do on so many Saturday mornings, Handsome and I embarked on a garage-and-estate-sale treasure hunt. We drove many miles across this beautiful Oklahoma countryside, picking through other families’ boxes of castoff toys and books, threadbare clothes, dinged furniture, and myriad collectibles. We spent most of our quarters and wrinkly dollar bills and filled our pickup with so much fun stuff, chatting and laughing all the way. I love these days. We both do.
As the Noon hour approached, we were winding down. A list of chores awaited us at the farm, and the climbing sun was elbowing through the morning’s autumnal crispness. Handsome suggested stopping at one more house, a sale he had tried after work on Friday. It would prove to offer us the smallest purchase but the deepest impressions.
We parked on a grassy shoulder and walked across this narrow road, downhill toward the property’s deeply shaded yard. The shade was so deep that my vision needed to adjust and my skin flushed cool despite the warming day. On both sides of the curved driveway stood calm, colorful gardens, each one decorated with folksy painted art. Lots of cracked pane windows, half rotted wooden chairs, and hog panels framed and dressed in wild flower vines. A really ecclectic, happily accessorized piece of heaven. Everything smelled sweet, and from behind an umbrella-topped table where two ladies were taking money, jazz music reached out to us out like tendrils into the peaceful Saturday air. It was this great mix of Oklahoma and Louisiana, and I could feel Handsome grooving it right along with me.
Having made one purchase here the day before, my husband knew of a few things he hoped to reconsider, so he proceeded to hunt. I had no problem following my thrifting nose to the colorful pottery, the used paints, the tall, beaten wooden shutters that remind me so strongly of New Orleans, and much more. Really, of course, I shared all of this woman’s taste in junk and craved to buy almost everything. But I had been shopping all morning and wanted to show some cash restraint. That’s part of the fun, after all, being discerning. Saying no can be as much fun as saying yes. Or at least it makes saying yes more fun when it happens.
I did see one accent pillow that was flat-out irresistible. The bright yellow floral fabric made my 1970s-child heart skip a beat. It was tightly stuffed, quilted, in perfect condition, and fresh smelling. Not a hint of mildew of smoke or anything. For one single solitary dollar, this pillow was officially going home with me. No matter that nothing in either my house or the Apartment has these colors already. I mean, sort of my fave green velvet chair. Sort of.
As I was trading four smudged quarters for this one glorious little pillow, a thin, energetic woman perhaps in her late sixties welcomed my questions about her gardens. A terrycloth sun visor was keeping her cropped white hair at bay. She touched my arms with silky soft hands, spoke closely to me, and smiled with her entire face while she described her gardens. Which plants she had cultivated, which ones were volunteers, etc. What I wanted most was to know more about the gardens, anyway. I was thrilled.
At some point Handsome slid up beside me and listened too. This slight, bright little woman was by then talking a lot more about the myriad construction projects in her gardens than about the flora and fauna. We had found several things we both wanted to try and duplicate at the farm, so we were happy to listen. She was describing with great affection how much work her husband had been putting into their little paradise.
“One time he built a bird cage there on that arbor, and once I bought this wooden swing from Ace Hardware and he decided it needed a better awning, so he built that. Then I wanted it out of that shade, so he moved it for me. He put up all those split-rail fences, too.”
You don’t need to worry about taking crd of each other – I think you both do it instinctively. But it sure is nice to be in that kind of relationship, isn’t it? Hugs, my friend.