CASE IN POINT

The price of anything 

is the amount of life you exchange for it.

-Henry David Thoreau

Last week I posted a picture of this vintage suitcase.  I really love that suitcase.  I really do.  Don't ask me why.  I'm so weird this way.   But my crush on that suitcase is not the storyline here.
Today I want to talk about the 90 minutes I spent cleaning it.  You see...the consequence of being obsessed with old things with seedy pasts is that you are ALWAYS cleaning up things.  If you know me, you know that virtually everything I own is at least 50 years old.  Unless it is food or toiletries, it makes me really happy to find something with a history.  If I need curtains, I find them at an estate sale for $5 (and then spend one afternoon washing them, another sunny day drying them on the line, and then one more afternoon sewing them back together since the threads were so fragile that the panel stitches literally disintegrated).  If I need a coffee pot I find an ancient one at the thrift store and then painstakingly clean out every nook and cranny and google "1962 Regalware Percolator manual".  Do you see a pattern?  My things take up a bit of time.  They make me happy.  But I have to recognize that they cost more than the $3.99 Salvation Army price sticker.

So back to the suitcase.  It was clean-up day at the "big house" (also known as the old house and more recently known as the house with all of our junk left in it).  I took some time to sort through our HUNDREDS of children's books to glean a relatively small number of treasured favorites.  And then I realized that I would need some place to put them!  So I picked one of my favorite pieces of 50's luggage and declared it "Guardian of the Books".  

The only problem was...it was really sticky.  Not lollipop residue sticky but rather, a sticky of a more mysterious and subtle variety.  Every surface had a tacky "grip" to it.  You know that feeling when you rest your hand on something and as you pull it away you get this fleeting sensation that the release wasn't as quick or natural as you would expect it to be?  That was the disconcerting problem.  So I spent an hour and a half scrubbing every inch of the case with hot water, soap and a toothbrush.  And while I was spending this perfectly beautiful and surprisingly autumn-like summer day scrubbing God-knows-what off of a suitcase I was watching Tom outside fighting his own battle.  I watched him labor for that same 90 minutes over  a busted cable in our pop up camper.  The kids played merrily with their toys  and Tom and I sweated and uttered profanities over ours.  
And then... I thought of our day.  
What would we have done today if I didn't own this beautiful old suitcase? 
That is the price of an old thing.  

On the other side, have you ever bought a brand new car just to spend months of agony, terrified that someone might scratch it?  Or yelled at your kids because they left a crayon in the backseat and now there will forever be a patch of plastic-like cornflower blue on the otherwise perfect upholstery.  Or didn't get to go on vacation this year because you can, in fact, manage a $500 car payment.  But.  Just.  Barely.   
That is the price of a shiny new thing.  

I'm starting to realize that there is a price to everything. New thing.  Old thing.  Expensive Thing.  Free Thing.  It doesn't make a difference.  The price is the THING.   And then, if you really want to freak yourself out, turn around and look at all the things around you!  Compound all that work, maintenance, stress, fear, and disappointment  that you bear over all those things!   Now...how many of those "things" are actually serving a real purpose and giving you some kind of joy that you wouldn't have if it weren't actually there?

I still love that suitcase.  I love it even more today! It serves a perfect purpose and takes up a prime piece of real estate in the little house.  But it kept me from something that day...and I will never know what it was.  I will never know where we would have gone.  Who I would have met.  What we would have seen.  What conversation I would have entered into with my children.  That is the price.  And if that is the price of owning something that I love, how much more the price of something that doesn't really mean anything to me?  Am I intentional about the things in my life?  Do I weigh their purpose with their cost?  Even after the big downsizing, if I look around me and answer honestly, the answer is still no.  But I'm working on it.  

*****In related news....Tom no longer "loves" the pop-up camper.*****