It started with the humidor.

It started with the humidor.  It was not the kind you put on a dresser or a side table.   No, it was the size of a dishwasher.  Jack Nicolson, George Burns, Winston Churchill, Castro, and Groucho Marx could have easily shared this humidor. It was big. 

We got the humidor at one of those moments that you are not sure how it happened.  We were at a wedding.  There were cigars being smoked.  There was champagne.  There was laughter.  And before you know it, we are accepting a second-hand humidor the size of our bathroom.  The humidor kicked around our house for a few years.  It held a few cigars and some sable paint brushes.  But this was a crazy waste of space in a tiny house, which holds six people and a dog. 

We started to clean out the garage that weekend and the humidor was going … come hell or high water.  We decided not to hassle with selling it.  We had a vision of ballroom dancing in our garage or maybe even parking a car in there.  Yes, we would give away the humidor, just as it had come into our lives.

A secret to all those single guys and gals out there who want to meet guys – advertise that you are giving away a free humidor.  You will get attention.  I made my post on  “Freestuff.”  Within an hour I had 18 guys e-mailing me that they wanted the humidor.  “Call me.”  “Text me.”  “e-mail me”  “I can be over in a half hour!”   I promised it to the first guy who responded.  He worked at Nordstoms and had an SUV.  He also said his partner would help him move it.   He fit the bill as someone I would hold the humidor for --- employed, appropriate vehicle for the object his was picking up and a friend to help him move it. 

This may sound logical to you…. based on common sense.  But I have learned not to expect such behavior on free stuff.  People call for free furniture only to tell me they don’t have a car, a truck or any friends or relatives with a vehicle. 

I learned this that first weekend we gave stuff away on Craigslist.  Our garage really was hideous.  We had done a construction project two years ago, which meant packing up all the stuff in our basement including the tool room.  But there really was a much longer-term history of what was in our garage.  Before we moved to Westchester we lived in an apartment in Park Slope and Craig had a studio in Williamsburg.  The Williamsburg studio could support three architects / draftsmen at once.  It was a different time in our lives those 15 years ago, but much of the furniture had followed us through a rental house and 12 years of construction in this house.  Now that we were DONE with gutting and rebuilding, it was clear what architectural furniture would stay and what would go.  We had also decided to streamline down to one closet for tools and hardware.

The furniture included a drafting table the size of an elephant, drafting stools, wheelie carts and flat files.  We also cleaned out architecture technical books and lamps.  There were supplies from various home improvement projects we didn’t finish or would never do again – like wall paper removal tools and several caulking guns. 

With the exception of the humidor, which was insanely heavy, I did all my posts as “Curb Alerts” and listed the items as clearly as I could. 

One of the first people to come by was a mother and son from Scarsdale.  He was hauling away armloads of technical and design books.  The mother drove a high-end car and they arrived literally minutes after I posted.  I asked her if she checks Free stuff on Craigslist often, the speed with which she arrived amazed me.  She told me she was pretty addicted to checking FreeStuff, especially on Saturdays.  I asked her son, who in his early 20s if he was an architect or engineer.  Before he could speak, his mother told me that he had just graduated from Pratt with a degree in architecture and that he had a job.  “The market is horrible but he got a job. He was top of his class.”  The son was physically embarrassed.   I asked the son who he was working for and he told me one of his teachers has a small practice.  I asked what kind of work and his mother said “he works until 11 at night all the time.  He is really working hard.”  I nodded.  “Yes, it is a very hard profession.”  Before I turned to go into the house for more stuff, I wished the young man good luck and waved good bye.  I wondered if I ever do that … answer for my children.  I’m sure I do.

My favorite couple that day were two artists from Queens, Long Island City.  He was a metal artists and she was a sculptor.  They came for the flat files with their station wagon.  When you look up “NYC artists” in the dictionary their faces are there.  A little scruffy, hip and skinny.  She went to Cranbrook and was a strong as an ox.  I guess lifting stone will do that to a girl.  They came for the flat files but left with a whole car load.  They were very sweet in how each item they took the other talked about why it would be good for them. 

Her:  “These flat files will be so good for your shop drawings and those other drawings you are doing.”
Him:  “Take that cart, it will help you organize your tools.”
Her:  “This lamp will work in your studio.”
Him:  “Go ahead and take some books, we have the space.” 

I was struck by that point.  When you are young you have the space.  I am past that point.  I don’t want any more space and I am getting more selective about what goes in the space I have.   

By the end of that Saturday I was encouraged.  Things were moving.  Every single item was gone by Sunday morning, every paint brush, caulking gun, and jar of misc. screws. 

That is when we found a half-a-bag of sand and a half-a-bag of cement stuck in the corner of the garage.  The designer / horticulturalist who installed our garden in the Spring had left them.  Craig was cranky that he would need to take them to the recycling center and haul them around in his car.  I decided to post them instead.  Craig was convinced that no one would drive here just for a half-a-bag of sand and a half-a-bag of cement.  I was a little tired from answering e-mails from people wanting to know which back issues of Wallpaper I had and if the lamps had working lightbulbs.  So my Sunday morning post read:

“Curb Alert:  Half-a-bag of sand.  Half-a-bag of cement.  Do not call.  Do not e-mail.  Do not ask me any questions about masonry.  Do not ask me what brand of sand.  Do not ask me how to make concrete.  Clearly, if I knew anything about masonry I wouldn’t be giving this away.  Come on Sunday morning for Curb Alert and it is yours for free. “

When I got home at lunchtime both bags were gone.  What had started with the humidor ended with creating some space in our lives. 

Then, I did a little Cha Cha by myself in the garage.

Taxi!

"Do you have any books to help you learn English?"
"Your English sounds pretty good to me?"
"No, it is for my friend.  You selling these?"
"No, giving them away."
"Free?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Yes, free.  What do you like to read?"
"Novels mostly."
"Here, this one was fun, very light."
"Can I have this too?" she says pointing towards a book on math.
"Yes, please feel free."
"It is for my son."
"How many kids do you have?"
"Three and all of them have graduated from college."

I look at her cab, which is pointing the wrong way on my street.  She stopped suddenly to look at the books I have on "Curb Alert."  The engine is still running.  In the back of her cab window is a rear window sign for Stony Brook College.  "Did your son go to Stony Brook"
"No, my daughter.  She gave that to me so I would never forget where she was.  I told her I'm putting this on my cab so you never forget where you came from."

Before she leaves she has an arm load of books.  Each one she carefully asks me again if she can take.  I ask her where she is from.
"Colombia.  I am one of 11 brothers and sisters.  We all live here.  I used to go back home, but haven't gone in a long time"
She is probably my age and wears full makeup and a huge broach on her shirt.  Her bosom is big and the shirt is tight, so the pin kind of looks like a plate on a dining room table.   

She thanks me and waves profusely.

As she drives off I think about a play I was once in called "Bits and Pieces."  It was a one-act play with 23 scenes. (Yes, it was ridiculous)   There were four or five actors.  We were on stage for all 23 scenes, which didn't really have any rhyme or reason to the order.  We all took to writing the scene names on our hands.  The play was about a young man who dies in a car accident and donates his body and organs.  His grieving wife goes around the country to meet the 21 different people who got one of his bits or pieces.  With each visit the dead man comes to visit her and eventually she can let go of him and stop grieving. 

Each bit, or piece or book that I give away seems to be going to someone who wants or needs it.  In return they leave me with a bit of themselves.  An image.  Some dialogue.  A story.  Or even the comfort of an empty box that I can fill up again.

The Highball

My mother loved to host parties.  She collected glasses, plates, flatware, and people.  She loved interesting people.  On the last hospital visit before she died, she charmed a young hospital chaplain, who learned to play organ at his prep school and shared her love of Charles Ives.  From her hospital bed she declared that she would host a summer garden party for him to meet some of her university friends.  When she "held court" like that the illness took a back seat.  She was in charge again.  She was lecturing.  She was teaching.  She was the hostess.

She went back home after that hospitalization.  We were officially in hospice.  One Saturday when I was at her house, I started to sort a collection of high ball glasses.  They seemed to be mismatched but were all from the early 1960s or late 1950s and shared a silver rim theme.  (I think she had collected them but never used them.)  You might say my mother had an obsession with glassware -- it was in every corner of her house.  Looking at the collection of glasses, I thought about Mad Men.  A time when drinking in the office was acceptable.  The drink of the highball was originally just a scotch and soda, which was what my mother drank in the winter when she was younger, but later lots of other drinks were served in the same glass -- even the tacky rum and coke.  Nick and Nora drank real highballs in the Thin Man series.  The highball glass is fatter than the Collins glass, which are fancied these days by modern restaurants and taller than a old fashioned glass, which is what you would have something "on the rocks" in.  Growing up in the 1960s you learn these sort of things. 

When my mom came home from that hospitalization the pain was horrible.  Pain management is really how do you balance between being coherent with unbelievable pain levels.  By this point my mom was sleepy a lot and sometimes loopy on pain medication.  In the highball glass collection I  found four glasses with the Notre Dame logo on them.  I was making small talk with my mom, as you do when someone is dying, and told her that my new mentor had two kids at Notre Dame and had become a total Notre Dame fan.  She told me to take the four glasses and give them to my mentor but that we needed a story about the glasses --- buying them in a tag sale would not do.  So she told me a story about how her college boyfriend, an architecture student from Notre Dame, gave them to her as a gift -- an apology for not coming back to Bridgeport during a school break.  I reminded her that her college boyfriend who was an architecture student at Yale not Notre Dame.  She informed me that she knew she was off on her details because of the pain meds but it didn't matter.  It was the story that mattered. 

This past Sunday, I sorted the rest of the collection of highball glasses. There were some singles with no mates but mostly they were three sets (if 7 is a set).  I carefully packed them in separate boxes and posted them on Craig's List.  I listed them as  "Mad Men" style highball glasses and put them on "Curb Alert."  As with most of my Craig's Lists posts they were gone in a day.

This blog entry may sound nostalgic.  But honestly, I'm not nostalgic (in general) for my mom's "stuff."  My mom had so much "stuff," there is no way I could make that much room in my life (or my house) for all of her "stuff" -- not the least of which is 43 delicate highball glass from the 1960s.  The people who take my curb alert "stuff" are so happy.  They tell me their stories and I tell them mine. I also feel like my mother's "stuff" masks what is really gone -- my mom.  My mom was a larger than life person.  She filled a room with ideas, opinions, emotions, drama and "stuff."  I'm not sure I ever want to be nostalgic about my mother.  Being nostalgic includes being excessively sentimental.  I hope I can always remember my mother honestly without a glaze of wistfulness.  I want to remember the good and the bad.  I want to remember the happiness and the pain.  I want to remember the banter and the tirades.

Afterall it is the story that matters.

Too Good to be True?

Craig’s List is a bizarre place.  It is built on trust and survives because of people’s street smarts and ability to read ***** SCAM WARNINGS IN ALL CAPS*****.    I am not a Craig’s list expert by any stretch.  I have only sold one item on Craig’s list – a car.  I mostly give things away.  I have learned a few things about successfully giving things away.  1)  be specific  2)  post a picture if you can  3)  use "Curb Alert" (people who look for free stuff on Craig’s List seem to be incapable of logistics, reading a watch or keeping an appointment.)

I gained great faith in the ability to find a home for ANY object using Craig’s List when my friend Rebecca gave away a fully decorated USED Christmas tree.  Rebecca and her husband wanted to decorate a Christmas tree in their new home but were not going to be there for Christmas day.  So, strings of homemade popcorn and cranberries latter – the festive druid symbol had a great 48 hours in their apartment before it hit Craig’s List as a last minute holiday deal – “Free Used Christmas Tree.”  It was in home #2 in less than 24 hours.

Sometimes the “free stuff” on Craig’s List makes me wonder and image the story behind why anyone would be giving away that item.  One Saturday morning at 6:30 AM there was a post “Free Broadway Tickets.”  I wanted to go in and flag the ad, convinced that it was a ticket broker crossing the line and entering the virgin “free stuff” space to taint it with a discount ticket offers.  But instead I found “Two seats to three Broadway shows today and tomorrow.  Wicked, Lion King and Jersey Boys.  Call to arrange pickup.” 

My mind immediately played out the opening scene of CSI – Craig’s List Unit.  This was clearly too good to be true.  Who gives away, I don’t know, $800 worth of Broadway tickets?  I convinced myself this was the Craig’s List version of “Can you help me move this couch into my white van?”  In other words a serial killer. 

But to my surprise by 7:30 AM the ad was down and the tickets gone.  My sister said I should have called.  She said, she would have gone to a free show that weekend at the drop of a hat.  The post made me think, what happened?  Did she breakup with the out of town boyfriend?  Did her aunt cancel at the last minute and being from Ohio and having moved to New York three years ago, she had already seen all three shows?  I never learned the story but made up several in my head.  I imaged that her mom who was coming to New York for a girls’ weekend and was hit by a car and was going to died.  She needed to return home immediately.  No time to call friends.  Only enough time to do a post and hand off the tickets in a Starbucks on Broadway before heading to the airport.  I feel so bad for her.  I hope her flight isn’t too long.  I hope she gets home to say good bye.  I’ll never know what the real story was but it doesn’t matter, I can have empathy anyway. 

We will see how it goes.

I have been giving away "stuff" on Craig's List and I feel like the process of giving things away has been complicated. There is spirituality in it.

It isn't JUST that I want less stuff in my life (I do). It is also that I am watching my kids grow up and that means, I need to help them learn how to part with possessions and move on. Craig's List is also part of the way that I am sharing "stuff" that belonged to my mom, which we don't need now that she has passed away. So in a way, Craig's List is part of the grieving process for me.

I called the blog "Zen & the Art of Craig's List," because I view this as the art of simplifying my life. I'm amazed at the people I have had e-mail exchanges with on Craig's List or who I have spoken to as they come to my "Curb Alerts." I also love that when I give things away on "Curb Alert" they are going to someone who wants or needs them -- not into the landfill.

So, I'm not sure if this will go anywhere as a writing project, but for now it is my diary of separation, grief, new beginnings, and ecology.

We will see how it goes.