And there is not so easy. I gave a month’s notice yesterday on the Juliet Rome space at Glenwood Antique Mall. Somewhere along the line, I promised a reader I would be honest about the journey of it.
Many time-worn clichés come to mind: endeavor to do what is best over what is good; hold your lane; the simplest, you can’t do everything (there is the most truth in that). I didn’t have time for the search. That word—search—holds a year of complicated truths for me. I am always looking for something: something beautiful, something different, something better, something harder, something more meaningful, something more benevolent, something higher.
I just finished a memoir I thought might be good for when I next host book club. I’ve walked it back. There is way too much ego on the pages, way too much self-exaltation. There was, however, an easy truth that became the seed for the decision that led to yesterday’s letting go: sometimes we follow the long line of something that turns into a long obedience in the same direction because we are sentimental.
I will always look for something beautiful, but I am the product of a family of bankers who talk about things like calculated risks and return on investment and holding costs. I would hold on to the Juliet Rome space as a long obedience just for the sheer enjoyment of building a tightly curated 12×4’ space, but that requires looking for what I don’t have, which is to say going to estate sales to look for treasures that can be wrapped in bubble wrap for the trip home, then cleaned up, photographed, researched, priced, tagged, bubble wrapped, delivered to the space, displayed, retagged when the suggestion of pricing software doesn’t hold up to current economics or prevailing interests, sold, return to start. It’s the looking for that sealed the deal. I don’t have time for the search.
It’s true that we can’t do everything. It requires us to pull out the old pie formula that asks, if the pie is the time you have in a day, and the slices of it are activity, are you slicing it true? Or have eight beautiful, enjoyable, memorable (for you and others) pieces become 16 messy, unlovely, crumby portions bearing little resemblance to what your (and God’s for you, of course) vision says is best and true?
Meanwhile, life is discovery, right? As I peel back the sour cream from the huevos rancheros J. has prepared to look for the perfect egg in the middle, I say, It’s a sunny side up day. He says, Sunny side of the street, bon appétit, let’s eat. I think, may he always assign one piece of his pie to cooking for me.
P.S. I finished the memoir and read Frances Mayes’ “A Great Marriage.” That will be my book club choice.
P.S.S. If you’re looking for a treasure, the looking isn’t over until the end of March.
