Estate Sale Dream

Do you like estate sales? I know some people just love them. They're economical, and the stuff is usually better than yard sale quality, and the prices are right. Me, I just can't get around the fact that I'm buying some dead person's belongings, from the house that person lived in.

Yeah! Go figure! A buzzard-lover like me, skeeved about picking the carcass of a dead person's house! Oh well, la di dah, I never claimed to be logical.

A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues who haunts estate sales told me that there was an estate sale the following weekend in Ocean County. "The ad says there's lots of Wiccan stuff there," she told me. "I thought of you. You might want to go check it out."

Say what?

Now I'm not only buying a dead person's stuff, I'm buying a dead person's religious stuff. No way, no how, not ever! Please feel free to differ, but I could never incorporate into my praise and worship some item that belonged to someone else before me, unless that person gave it to me specifically to use, with his or her blessing.

Estate sales make me sad. It's just how I roll. No free advice from me this time -- you do it your way.

It's no wonder then, that I have been in the pit of depression since early Friday morning, when I dreamed that I was attending an estate sale at my grandparents' farm on Polish Mountain. It was a pretty vivid dream. The new owner of the house had already begun renovations, and scattered about the construction debris was my grandparents' furniture, my grandmother's jewelry, knick knacks (she loved them), and clothing. Spare was in the dream with me, and she and I were just hugging and crying.

When I woke up, I cried. Maybe twice in my life a dream has made me cry.

When I was 20, I was planning to write a great, meaningful, popular novel that would earn me enough to purchase the property and live blissfully in it all my days. When I was 40, buying the farm looked like a bigger hurdle, since I had a mortgage and kids to educate ... but it still could happen. I was still working on that novel, and it still looked good to me.

When I was 52, the novel had been rejected by a dozen agents and editors. I started a new, low-paying job for which I am completely unsuited. There's not enough money for anything. I face growing old in a career that shows no mercy to older workers. You'd think I could put a positive spin on this job, but I can't. It's difficult and thankless. My salary keeps going down. The expectations keep increasing. And the farm is sold. Sold to a local man who bought it for his 18-year-old son. The kid's name is on the mailbox.

Langston Hughes was absolutely correct. What you're looking at when you see me is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Anyone have a splint?