St. Anthony - The Keeper of Lost Things

Lost Things made into a lapel pin
Auction item

Recently, I experienced something new - bidding on items at an auction. My mother and several of her friends visit the weekly auctions held at Weston's Antiques, a company that specializes in Estate liquidations, looking for items to add to their collections. They prep for the Tuesday sales by visiting the company's website where they can view samples of items as early as Sunday, and then attend the preview on Monday. There they look at items, read makers marks, look for damage, and plan their strategies. Tuesday begins by checking in with the auction house and obtaining a bidding card with a number and finding a good seat.

On the day I attended the sale, I perused the room looking for things I might like to take home to use in decorating my home. The pin featured in this photo was one among the many items of costume jewelry in a cardboard box. Its appearance definitely fits the bill for today's novel  - The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. 

Anthony Peardew lost the one thing his fiancé placed lovingly in his care; worst still he lost it on the very day she died. For the rest of his life while looking for this special item, he would pick up other lost things taking them home carefully cataloging them with date and location found. It was always his intention to work to return the items to their rightful owners, but found it hard to let the items go. Upon Anthony's death, his home and all the lost items are left to his assistant/housekeeper, Laura, with the one proviso that she take on his unfinished task.

Life hasn't always gone smoothly for Laura and this task seems overwhelming, but her best friend Sarah has some great advice for her and for the rest of us as well, "Laura, you have to let go of the past. You deserve to be happy, but you have to make it happen yourself. It's down to you....Don't keep punishing yourself for things you did then, but don't use them as an excuse either. You have a chance now to make a really good life. Grab it by the balls and get on with it." (p. 140).  And that's what Laura does. Ably assisted by Sunshine, a young woman with Down's syndrome, and Freddy the gardner, the team develops a website for displaying the items along with a brief description. Making use of social and mainstream media, Laura gets the word out about the website and items begin to be reclaimed.

Silver Plated Tea Set bought at auction
above it is a Wallace Nutting photograph
purchased at an antiques shop. 

Part of this interesting novel are the stories that Anthony wrote about the items he found, and like Anthony I began to wonder about the items that were being auction off in front of me. I purchased the silver plated tea service pictured here. Who owned it last? Was it a gift - wedding, anniversary or birthday? Who did they serve tea to? What was discussed while they enjoyed their cup? Who made it? You can imagine the questions might be endless, and I could easily begin to write a dozen different stories that feature this tea set in it.

Over the past few years, I have been drawn to collecting pre-owned items. They have such character and history. Plus there is a bit of an environmental aspect to it - recycling and reducing. When I visit an antique or thrift shop I think of all the stuff there and where will all the stuff that we keep making end up? What do we do with things we've lost - buy a new one to replace it if we can't find it. Is that the best solution? Without making and buying of stuff our economies wouldn't work, so can there be an easy solution for us?

A way of looking at obituaries - The Good Byline

Art Journal Pages - magazine scraps and
sympathy card pieces (from my grandfather's passing)

Sooner or later we all find ourselves in the position to clean out our loved ones homes and we need to decide on what to keep and what to get rid of. Some of the material we take home with us to sort through at a later date because often it's to difficult to do at the time. Recently, while visiting with my mom she was going through one such box filled with the sympathy cards from her father's passing. Knowing that I was collecting scraps for my art journaling projects she offered to let me take what I wanted. That's how this piece started - with the irises from one of those cards.

The Good Byline, by Jill Orr, features Riley Ellison a young twenty something whose life is on hold after her long-time boyfriend has dumped her and left town. She's under-employed at a job that doesn't fully use her skills or talents, lives in a house inherited from her grandfather, and hasn't moved on from the break-up. "I was living a life I'd lost control over somehow, treading water in a self-designed purgatory." (p.95) She is rocked by the news that a childhood friend has committed suicide, and this girl's parents want her to write their daughter's obituary. Riley has experience with writing obituaries as her grandfather was a well known writer of them. The difficulty for Riley is that the police ruled her grandfather's death a suicide and she has always struggled to believe he was capable of taking his own life. She can't come to grips that her friend has done the same, and she would be right - she didn't. I'll let you read about how Riley manages to unravel the mystery.

The point is about the obituary. If you've read some of the more popular self-help books, they advise writing your own obituary as a way to set goals for your life. Riley's grandfather often told her that obituaries were about life and not death. Sprinkled throughout the book are quotes from obituary writers such as this one from Jim Sheeler, "What can I learn from this life that will impact my own life?" (p.111) I thought that was a powerful question. In our grief we are often blinded by the loss of life and forget to remember the joy of the life lived. That consolation comes with time. When I work on an art journaling piece, I pour through the clips of words and phrases that appeal to me and begin to put them together with images. Little did I know that I would take pieces of a sympathy card and weave them into a piece that encourages the choice of living life to the fullest when you find yourself in a dark place (just when all hope seems lost). As Riley and I both learned, you have to live life to the fullest in order to provide lots of great material for your obituary.

Where do the French go?

In continuing to read stories and memoirs where our hero or heroine picks up their lives and moves somewhere else, which I think I'll call the Peter Mayle effect, I've begun to wonder what this is telling me.  I don't have to wonder, I know - I'd like my life to be different than it is right now. Thankfully I find escape in books and not drugs; the habit is cheaper and doesn't ruin my body or my relationships. But where would I want to go? My last post was by a Canadian woman who moved to Paris via California (Paris Letters) and my newest read is another Brit (like Peter Mayle) who moves to the Poitou-Charentes region of France - Tout Sweet by Karen Wheeler.

I think countries like France and Italy have come up with a great way to get their old run down cottages, farms, and villas renovated and boost local employment of handy men/women - get some foreigner to come in with dreams of bucolic village life, and spend a lot of money trying to achieve it.  Don't get me too wrong here, I think restoring existing buildings is wonderful. I hate seeing the clearing of land followed by brand new construction when there are abandoned properties waiting to be reused. I often wonder why some of these places aren't being used - taxes? death? squabbling families and inheritance? In Tout Sweet and The French House (see post here), the in-comer buys a home that is more hovel than habitable: no plumbing or heating, roofs that need major repairs, flooring that must be put down, walls redone and the list goes on. But they are in love with the idea of what life will be like when everything is done, and because it has turned out well they've successfully pitched the book idea to some publisher.

So where do the French go when they want to start over? I certainly haven't read any of those memoirs, or perhaps they are only available in France. Or is it a mind set of Americans or Britons who need to escape? Are the French all happy just where they are or have they found the secret to living a contented life? As for me, I know that running away from home isn't going to be my solution. Learning to be content with where I am is the challenging lesson for the day.

How much money will it take ....

Paris Letters -
Janice MacLeod and
Cafe tea pot

I was drawn to Janice MacLeod's Paris Letters simply by the first line of the back cover blurb, "How much money does it take to quit your job?" Excellent question! In her case not as much as she thought, but her plan was to take a break for a year and rethink her career plans - I want to retire. I want to be done with working altogether. I'm still a bit young for retirement as I can't start drawing on the IRA monies for at least another ten years.

MacLeod did what many of us dream of, quit the job and go off to explore the world. She ended up in Paris. It seems everyone wants to run off to Europe to end up in Paris, or Provence, or Florence. To have a little apartment or reclaim a farm house and plant a garden. It all sounds so wonderful and I'm grateful to the numerous people who have done it and written about their experiences, but deep down I know it isn't what I want. I want a quiet little place on a lake or a lazy river where I can sit and watch the water flow, hear it lap against the bank, see sun or moonlight sparkle upon it. To set out in my kayak and paddle early in the morning or late in the afternoon as the sun sets. That's what I dream about. Now how much money do I need to make this dream a reality?

Money isn't really the object here, it's the belief that I can make this a reality that is at the heart of the matter here. I need to believe that I can have this dream. MacLeod wrote a lot about her 'old life' of being a copywriter and that it was her dream job but that she had come to dislike it. The dream hadn't turned out to be what she expected. She had been living a life that wasn't authentic. She began to strip things away until her possessions fit in a suitcase and took to the road. At some point she finally gave up one last reminder of her previous life and it was then that "I forgave myself for my prior judgements of not being good enough to be just who I was" (107). There it was - the truth - my truth. My constant daily struggle to be okay in myself no matter where I am. Quitting my job and going halfway around the world will not solve my problems. Accepting who I am is the only solution and discovering what it is that makes me happy and doing it is what's most important now. Everyone wants to travel to see Paris, but deep down in my heart I know it isn't for me. And that's okay. Step one - stop living someone else's dream.

"Write to learn what you know.... First and most obviously was that I had all the inner resources I needed to effectively deal with my situations" (240). Paraphrasing that - I read to learn what I know, and she's absolutely right, I do have the inner resources to deal with my life. I've been learning as I have managed to get through every challenge I have faced in my life. I've simply not given myself credit for the inner strength because I've been waiting for someone else to point it out to me. It's just not going to happen that way. The only person that can pat me on the back for all the hard work I've done is me. With that knowledge, I can begin to plot, plan, and save for rescuing myself from the life I thought I wanted and start living the life I really want. You can too!!

MacLeod, Janice. Paris Letters. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2014.

Books can be a Blessing

One of life's challenges is to find the small blessings that pepper our lives every day. Some days it's hard to do so. And on other days they are so obvious that you can't help but trip over them. The real blessing, is to learn to be present enough in your life to know that blessings are there in spite of the chaos, and to seek them.

As I've written before, words of wisdom can pop off the page when you least expect them to, and that's the small blessing that comes from reading. Martha Woodroof's Small Blessings  came along just when I needed it in my life, and that's the nature of blessings. This novel is filled (SPOILER ALERT) with people who are struggling with addiction and mental illness, either their own or someone's that they care for. Most importantly it is a book about how people gain insight into their true selves.

Everyone has something that they hide or try to run from. As a result of the discomfort, fear, shame, (you add your own emotion here) many seek to ease the pain using drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, overeating, busyness (add your addiction here). Two-thirds of the way through the book (page 207 to be exact), two characters are discussing their unusual childhoods when one states they wouldn't have swapped with anyone else, "Because then I would have been living someone else's life and not my own." To which the other person replied, "It's sort of like we each get our own adventure, isn't it?" And there is the lesson - accepting one's life, accepting one's adventure, accepting one's own identity. It is when we try to run from ourselves that we run right into trouble. Haven't I done the same time and time again. I needed to be reminded that it's time to stop running. It's time to learn acceptance. It's time to practice the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer - accept the things I cannot change, find the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It's the last part that's the real kicker.

More stories about marriage

Every once in a while it is enjoyable to sit down with a book that is rather old-fashioned and simple. I discovered the reprinting of D.E.Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book last year at the book store. This title was originally published in 1934 and its sequel, Miss Buncle Married followed in 1936. Life was a lot different then for Miss Buncle and her creator Dorothy Emily Peploe (nee Stevenson). Like many women of her time she didn't have the opportunity for a university education as her father worried about educated women in the family. She started writing at a young age and in secret. Lucky for us that she found a publisher to take on her work and share it with the world.

Miss Buncle finding herself rather short of cash looks for a way to earn some and turns to writing a book. She, like many authors, writes what she knows and her novel about a small village full of interesting characters is born. The only problem is that she hasn't successfully hidden the true nature of her neighbors and when the book is published under the pseudonym of John Smith, everyone is up in arms. She lives in terror of the day when she should be found out. When that day does come, she is spirited away by her publisher, Mr.Abbott.

When next we encounter Miss Buncle, she is now Mrs. Abbott and she's on the hunt for a new home for the two of them. She chooses a run down home in the little village of Wandlebury, but she alone can see what it and the garden can become. Lo and behold she pulls off a miracle and husband and wife happily become part of the community. Of course plenty of shenanigans occur but I will not spoil it for you.

Near the very end I found this quote: "It's turned out all right after all, she said contentedly. "Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things anymore." (p. 323) What a great piece of advice! So much of my life I have spent an inordinate amount of energy and time on worrying about things when all along they seem to come out all right. I need to give up the worry and just enjoy the moment. The wasted energy prevents me from having enough for living life to the fullest. Mrs. Abbott who thought she wasn't very clever is the most clever of us all.