The Voice, that lives in my head, followed me out the door as I was headed for the garage. It had grabbed a piece of chewing gum and was noisily chomping by the time I opened the garage door. Once inside, the Voice donned a long wool trench coat and began to do the cat walk between rows of tables still covered with items from the previous weekend's garage sale.
"Nice coat.", the Voice quipped.
"Ummm." I answered between closed lips. I knew what was coming.
"And you thought this made you look taller?", the Voice asked in mocked sincerity.
It was too early in the day to engage the Voice's wit, so I chose to ignore it.
The garage sale had been a huge success, but there was still a lot of things left over. Having decided that less is actually more, I vowed that once I brought all the stuff out of the house, it was not going back in. The task that lay before me was to box up what was left and donate it.
I was holding a large colorful serving bowl, looking at it, when the gum chomping grew louder. The Voice was peering over my shoulder, "Get rid of it.", the Voice said between chomps.
"But."
"But what?"
"But what will I put potato salad in?", I asked.
"When was the last time you made potato salad?", the Voice asked and then made a large gulping sound as it swallowed the gum.
"Two years ago." I answered
"Say good bye to the dish." The Voice wandered off, occasionally stopping to look at some other treasure I had decided to part with.
I let out a long sigh. One like Mother used to do, the one that always drove me crazy when she did it. The Voice, as usual, was right, I did not need the dish or anything else that was left.
I grabbed a cardboard box and a stack of newspapers and began packing away the bowl, plates and glasses. The Voice had shed the coat and was busy rummaging through a box of door knobs. After the fourth box was filled, I heard the Voice giggling.
"What's so funny?"
"The flower bench!", the Voice responded. Its giggles had become full blown bursts of hysterical laughter.
I tried to stifle a smile. The flower bench. The flower bench I had so painstakingly put together with the old ornate cement blocks from the front porch, that were left over after the remodel. I had toiled long over that bench, making four stacks of two blocks each, to be filled with potting soil. Then I rimmed the top of each stack with a wooden frame and laced the stacks together with long boards, set on edge, to make a bench. The bench was over sixteen feet long and graced the sidewalk by the front of the house.
Our young friend, whom my daughters refer to as their brother, had offered me the use of his four-wheeler and trailer. I thought it was a splendid idea to be able to load the trailer with household wares rather than make numerous trips back and forth to the garage. Although I can put a forty foot long school bus in reverse and back it into a single parking space, I never mastered being able to back up an attached trailer. Knowing this, I decided to just pull the trailer down the sidewalk until I was even with the front porch steps. What I forgot was, the trailer tires were on the outside of the trailer and therefore wider than my intended path. By the time the four-wheeler and I reached the front of the flower bench, the trailer tire had reached the back of the bench. The whole thing went over like a stack of dominoes. I had to join the Voice in the laughter, it was funny.
When I had boxed up all I could for one day, the Voice asked me what I had learned from this experience. "That is the last garage sale I will ever have.", I answered.
"Besides that?". The Voice was being serious now.
"That I need to learn to back up a trailer."
As I walked off, I heard the Voice let out a long sigh.
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