Looking beyond the bidding war

I
’ve been perusing a lot of online auctions lately. I’ve been to a few auctions in person, where it’s all a quick hustle and bustle of looking while everyone is crowded around you, and then the thrill of the in-person bidding. This is different.
With COVID-19, most auctions are now done online, and I’m grateful for that. In fact, it gives me more time to look through the items and study them, to think about what I might bid on. And there’s still the thrill of the bidding, only now it is watching that timer go down and furiously hitting the keyboard and seeing if you got the item or if someone quickly outbid you. It’s a similar anticipation and excitement, I’m just doing it in my pajamas.
Looking through these auctions certainly gets me thinking, though. Not just about the deals I might get on items I need – and on many I really don’t — but also about the people these items once belonged to. A collection of bears, old tools, license plates, four boxes of kitchen utensils, five antique radios, a slew of odds and ends, paint, farm tools, car parts … the list goes on. It strikes me that what I am looking at when viewing these possible treasures is the accumulation and timeline of a person’s life. 
That plate from Niagara Falls? A long-awaited honeymoon trip in 1972. That collection of salt shakers? Annual Christmas gifts from a niece that kept sending them, even when there was no longer room for them to be displayed. That food processor? A purchase long dreamed of, but once achieved never really used. The box of dusty canning jars? The vessels of a once-productive garden. Those car parts? A project to ‘get to when there’s time’ — but time ran out. Those walkers, wheelchairs, bathroom assist devices and canes? The ravages of time on a body.
When I see these items I wonder about them. In the assortment of cookbooks, which one was the favorite? Is there one in there, sticky and splattered from a recipe lovingly cooked over and over, a family favorite? Will the winning bidder also find that recipe to be a favorite? Did the hiking boots take this person up to a tall, remote ridge where she sat and enjoyed the silence and the birds chirping? Did the person driving the tractor take pride and joy in sowing fields, or was it a mundane task, one that needed doing? Was that Jeep the result of years of saving, an adventure of four-wheeling that finally came true?
This leads me to wonder about my own pile of possessions – which are currently spread in two storage units, three campers, a half-built house, and a trailer. If I die and my family were to decide to auction off my stuff, what will the bidders think of my belongings? Will they wonder why I have four totes of yarn containing three partially finished blankets, two hats and a half a mitten? Will they be surprised to find I ended up with five coffee pots? Or is that the norm? Will they look at the thousands of photographs I took and think, “that’s trash,” or will it be “wow, what a find!”?
More than a dozen years ago I sold my home in Alaska and got rid of boxes and boxes and more boxes of stuff. There were so many material possessions that I realized I didn’t need, and had no use for. Somehow – how does it happen? — I ended up with piles and piles of it again. Most of it I could care less about, they are possessions, things, the stuff that you use and accumulate day to day. 
But in among the coffee pots, the unfinished quilt, the picture frames, the dollar store curtains and the inverter I just had to have, there are treasures. At least, to me, they are treasures. There’s the trophy my daughter won in a Miss Pre-teen Petite contest when she was 7, and her doll cradle I built her when she was 5, and her favorite sweater she wore just before she died from a car accident. There’s the plaster of Paris handprints my oldest son made in pre-school, and his baby blanket, worn and frayed. There’s the long, black coat my younger son wore when he was broody and full of teenage angst, along with the newspaper clippings from when he went to war in Iraq. There are baby books, lockets of hair and report cards. 
Then there are the memories of my life: the photographs dating back to the 1970s when I first picked up a camera and found my passion in a viewfinder; the ring I bought myself as a reminder to love myself after a tough break-up; the painting I bought in a second-hand store that just makes me feel good when I look at it; the wedding dress I meant to give to my daughter — and the list goes on.
So I look at the items in online auctions, at the teapots and mismatched chairs, at the fishing boats and pie pans, and I wonder: Were they just stuff? Or were they treasures? And what will they be in the future?