Recently I attended my sister’s church’s bazaar, as I’ve done for many years. In a lot of ways it is a very typical church bazaar with crafts (both simple and elegant), rummage, junk and food.
As with so many things, I enjoy the idea of the event and the camaraderie more than the actual things to be found in a bazaar (except of course for the lefse…Mom always bought me lefse there). That was a little different for me this year.
This spring my mother passed away after a very brief, but disastrous, illness. None of us kids was at all prepared for her passing. However, I think that getting together to go through her life’s collection of precious and not so precious accumulations brought a relatively close group of siblings even closer.
There were inevitably things of hers that, while meaning a great deal to her, simply did not mean enough to any of us to squeeze them into our already full (I mean, we have all had 50+ years to forge our own collections) full lives and houses. Good friends got a few things, the churches and homes where Mom and Dad spent the last few years of their lives got a few things, GoodWill received more than one box and, somehow I hate to say it, a few things went in the dumpster.
Hang in there, I’m about to tie in the church bazaar…
Seven months is a long time to hang on to things you inevitably don’t want to keep, but seven months after she passed away a number of her special things were placed at the church bazaar. I met my younger sister at the bazaar and she initiated a game to see who could spot one of Mom’s things first. Of course she also won…I think she already had the item picked out when she started the game…
Trudy found the glass punch bowl that Mom used for almost every family party she hosted for the past 25 years. The punch bowl was totally intact and included eight glass cups, eight plastic hangers for hanging over the edge of the bowl and hooking a glass on before serving and a plastic punch ladle. Upon looking more closely, I noticed that the base was missing. My gosh, who was going to pay $3 for a punch set without the glass base on which it always sat! We set out looking for the base and within a couple minutes someone came up with it…okay, it was Trudy again. “Rip off that $2 sticker and bring it over here,” I said, as I raised up the bowl. She took off the sticker, turned the little dish over (it looks a little like a small bowl itself, except it’s supposed to sit upside down, under the larger punch bowl, to add to the elegance) and set in under the punch bowl. “Ah, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
One of the areas that always interests me the most is the used book section. Trudy happened to pick up a book she wanted and here’s what she saw on the front page.
We found Mom’s Fontanini nativity set at the silent auction table. This was a set that Paul and I had given to Mom and Dad, piece by piece, over the years. While it was very special to her, it was not the family nativity set that any of us kids had grown up with, so it didn’t get picked in the first round draft.
I met my cousin, daughter of Dad’s younger brother, and her two daughters at the bazaar as well. She was visiting my older sister and her kids and just lucked out to be in town for the bazaar 😉
Mom’s sisters came to the bazaar whenever they were in town. Sadly, one sister has passed away as well, but Mom’s older sister is around the cities and doing great. This year my cousin, her daughter, came to represent her (and to buy, like, 25 Christmas presents, I think).
Here’s a few more pictures from this event. Ready or not, life moves on.
