Anxious to be out of the house for a bit, I wandered through an antique mall on Central Avenue. Everyone was masked; entrance and exit doors stood wide open for fresh air to move through the building; a few casual shoppers like myself gave each other lots of room to browse. And as always, this particular antique mall had the radio tuned to a local station that plays the oldies with DJ Bobby Box. I always enter antique stores with high hope of finding a small treasure.
My mood changed slowly but discernably.
At first, I looked for objects that please my daughters: unusual art, mid-century decorator items, books, casual chic, useful kitchen dishes or tools. But of course, I saw many things that simply reminded me of my childhood...rusty outdoor tools and shop tools like the ones my father had, porcelain and glass dishes that my grandmother and aunts used, rock art collages like I made at school in 7th grade art class, gingham aprons like my mother wore every time she worked in the kitchen. Booth after booth was pulling me down. I had come alone. I told myself that I was missing the antique treasure hunts I once enjoyed with my sisters. Told myself Those days are gone and, Isn't it lunacy to think I can recreate the happy times when I've come here alone and, I never did fit it really only an outsider looking in at others and hoping my time comes around.
I came across an old oil painting, probably 1950s based on the images, cars and clothing. It was a cityscape, colorful and interesting, great scale, strong expression and focus on the activities of street and sidewalk. Signed, too! Best reason to get excited? It was marked fifteen dollars. I set it back thinking I should walk around the mall while I decide but knowing I like it only for its portrayal of a 1950s downtown and believing it was better to be alive then or better anytime other than now because I am falling into every old person's trap of wondering how I might have fit in better if I'd lived in a different time or place.
I saw furniture that reminded me of times I lived in furnished apartments and trailer homes. I looked through stacks of paintings and sketches that brought back the memory of me trying to start a small business just when the economy was crashing in 2008-2009. Several booths had prominent displays of black dolls and black Aunt Jemima kitchen decorator items from the 1930s and 1940s--I wondered why these collectables are suddenly popular. Who will buy these? I know that my sister and her husband will but, as I told them recently, although these images are fiction, they are fiction that intentionally demean an entire race. My memories of black people during my childhood in the Texas panhandle and in eastern New Mexico are sad ones, not happy ones. My despondency dug in.
About halfway through, after I had browsed up and down aisles and booths and started sneezing because of dust and old book mold, the KDSK radio commercial caught my ear. Conservative are being muzzled everywhere. These are dangerous times. We must fight the liberal's wish to eradicate all opposition. And I almost walked out then. Muzzled? Why use that word in a commercial on widely-heard media and on widely-watched television? I am absolutely sure that no right-wing voice is muzzled in a USA ICE prison where immigrants' voices are truly muzzled or in Guantanamo where prisoners have rare opportunity to speak to a wider audience.
Right-wing extremists and absolutists use words such as muzzled and lynched because of everything these words suggest: violence, threat, cruelty, ignorance, crime and disgust. White supremacists use these words as liberally as they say There is no systemic racism here, Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, White privilege is a myth. And the truth is covered up.
That commercial played on KDSK overwhelmed me in sadness. I left the antique mall without purchasing either of the treasures I admired. I left in tears.
Driving west on Central Avenue, just as the light turned red at Eubank, holding me while tears frustrated my attempt to gather courage for another antique mall, the truth suddenly appeared. The second anniversary of my mother's death came and went five days earlier without my notice, thinking I let her down again, she is barely gone although her number is still in my phone, wondering, will my daughters and grandchildren forget me as quickly as this but does it really matter when each of them is busy in their own lives, knowing I've been grieving all winter for my parents because I miss trying to make them laugh and listening to their stories.
The loss is wider and deeper than a Pyrex dish or shop tools remind me. The losses in 2020 alone add burdens to my burdened soul. Now sixty-seven years old, I have not laughed or cried with tears, with a gusto that anyone in proximity can hear, in at least five years. This loss is greater than all the rest. It means that my burdens and my equally reliable joys have little expression. Unless I put them into words on a page. This is it.
Today I understand that I did come away from the antique mall with a treasure. Although I should mourn losses and celebrate benefits and joys, my time to put them in writing has arrived. My new chapter is begun. My voice will be heard.