Garage Sale Guidance

Dale’s relationship with her mother was often strained. “I was strong headed at times,” Dale admits. “I kept to myself and didn't share a lot with her about what was going on my life.”  Even after Dale moved to another state and the two women set up a weekly Saturday night phone call, their exchange was a little stiff.  The only safe topic, Dale says, was garage sales.

            Both women were “addicts.”  “We would talk about what we found and what we bought.  Mom was a 'pro', and would let me know if I had stumbled upon an especially good bargain.”  One night, as they chattered on, Dale realized something.  The barriers that always seemed to be between them were gone. “This call was different,” she says.  “We really talked. Everything just seemed to open up and the conversation was truly mother-daughter.. When we finally hung up I noticed that we had been on the phone almost three hours.”  Dale felt so good.  Maybe their relationship would continue along this closer, more satisfying path.

      Dale’s mother would be out of town the following Saturday, so no phone call was planned.  On Monday morning, however, Dale’s brother called her.  “Mom got home okay, but she’s in the hospital,” he said.  “She’s had a stroke and it doesn’t look good.”

      Dale was shocked.  How could this happen?  Quickly she made travel arrangements and soon arrived at her mother’s bedside.  Her mother never emerged from her coma, and died a few days later. “Through everything, I kept thinking back to that last talk we had,” Dale says.  “It was so comforting, and I was glad we had shared that good conversation.”

            But life without her mother was difficult.  “I really missed my mom,” she says, “and I kept longing to talk to her one more time.  Sometimes I prayed that I could have a sign that all was well with her.”  Dale had stopped going to garage sales too.  The memories were just too difficult.

            The second anniversary of Dale’s mother’s death was approaching, when Dale had an unusual weekend off from work. Her thoughts turned to her mother as she ran errands and tried to ignore the garage sale signs that seemed to be everywhere. She would never be able to go to another one….  “I was heading back to my house when I saw a group of signs all in a row,” she says.  “I intended to turn, but instead it seemed as if the car just kept going straight, following those signs.”  The signs led to a particular yard, and Dale pulled up in front and stopped.  Somehow she knew she was supposed to be there, but the thought didn’t keep her from trembling just a little, as she got out of the car.  At first glance, the merchandise all looked like junk that she would never buy. What was she doing here?

            Then she felt drawn to a particular table in the garage.  Dale looked inside the box on top.  A bunch of coffee cups.  Why would she need more of those?  Then---as if she was being guided---she put her hand down into the bottom of the box and pulled up yet another cup.  “When I saw it, I started to cry,” she says.  “I asked the woman in charge of the sale whose cup it was, and she said she had never seen it before.”

            But Dale had seen it---and so had her mother.  The cup bore the logo of the college Dale had attended, a small institution six hundred miles away, one that no one in this vicinity had probably ever heard of. A cup just like this one had sat in her mother’s kitchen, a reminder of the care and concern her mother had always felt for her, despite their sometimes-difficult days.

“I know I was guided to this sale, to find the reassurance I needed,” Dale says.  She and her mother will meet again.

(C) 2005  Joan Wester Anderson   www.joanwanderson.com

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