Life lived.

Jul 20, 2026

Last Saturday, a friend asked me to join her at some estate sales. She drove, created the perfect route, and even packed us some snacks. She is my most prepared friend.

I’ve always wanted to go to an estate sale because I’d like to find a nice sewing machine that’s out of my price range. But a little nagging part of me was weirded out. Going through the items that someone chose for their own always kind of seemed predatory. I think too much about things, too often. Had I not gone, I may have always carried that with me. Instead, I realized, it could be a way to appreciate and reuse items that others no longer had any need for.

While I did see some personal, nostalgic items in these houses, it reminded me that not everyone is as sentimental as me. Not everyone gets that pain in their heart to see postcards and old photographs in antique shops. I hold on to letters, photos, trinkets, and memories that others would have tossed long ago. And it’s okay. It’s okay that I hold onto them, and it’s okay that not everyone else does.

My friends know me well. They know I’m ridiculously sentimental and will keep any and all handwritten notes they give me. I think my last three emails to friends basically said, “I love you and I miss you.” Life happens.

No one understands me better than my husband. When I’m emotionally overwhelmed (underwhelmed?), he asks me when the last time any of my lifelong long-distance friends have called or emailed me lately. He understands the correlation.

All this to say, I think I did estate shopping wrong. I didn’t buy anything. But I fell in love with the sentimental pieces of themselves they left along the path. The story of their lives told in handwritten notes and sentimental trinkets.

But let’s start from the beginning. First off, my friend has more plants and character in her place than most folks. A few of her beautiful, healthy plants.

On to the houses. First place was butt to nuts busy. They had beautiful antique furniture and this in the garage:

I have no room in my house for any new furniture or cars. I was overwhelmed, and my people-anxiety was getting to me.

We headed to the next one. It was much less crowded, and the front room was busting with books. I already felt more settled. I saw this and immediately got excited to be there.

We didn’t get too much farther before the rickety basement stairs appeared. “Name your price,” said a sign, hanging on the wall, with an arrow pointed down. My sprained ankle said no, but I took over, and all but hopped on my good ankle all the way down. I honestly could still be down there, combing through everything.

It’s a local joke around here that everyone’s granddad has these in their basement from the world’s fair in the early eighties.

Second thing that caught my eye was this — a box of old newspapers with important headlines.

Yes, I flipped through most of them. I found a kindred in that house. It was just the beginning.

Then this. A protest sign from the Bush-era.

Saved for years. Decades. It’s just cardboard and marker and a little wooden stick. Should have been tossed, but wasn’t. It meant something to someone. Something came over me, and I tried not to get choked up down there.

I hobbled my way back upstairs. T-shirts on the window sill. Well-worn from a life well lived.

I already knew I was going to search in the newspaper archives for more about these folks after I left.

It wasn’t just him who was politically active, she played a major role as well.

In the upstairs office, more signs.

And his book. Well, one of the books he wrote.

I later found out that he worked for Hubert H Humphrey and helped with civil rights legislation. He was on a committee for NASA. His office at the DNC HQ was broken into in June of ‘72. Watergate.

And in another room, a scout uniform, adult-sized.

Little bits of ephemera were sprinkled throughout that house. Crumbs that told their bigger-than-life story.

They were there. They lived triple the amount of lives others led. And they kept proof. It was important to them, even if it was just clutter to others. Like this DC no parking sign, that seems completely ordinary until you look at the date. Inauguration Day, 1977. Jimmy Carter’s.