I got a bee in my bonnet a few weeks ago that I wanted to find a salvage yard. I wanted to dig in junk and get dirty and find a cool treasure to bring home with me. Adam was totally on board.
We found the place. I knew the minute I walked in that I had struck scrap-metal-gold, because the place smelled like a cross between my dad and every old hardware store I have ever been in in my life. My hands were black in the first two minutes, that's how good it was. We bumbled around inside the small store without much inspiration. Then we stepped out the back door into the elephant-graveyard of all dead metal (insert lame 80's-hair-band joke here). A giant warehouse loomed before us with rusty gizmos and cool thingamabobs that I had never seen before. There were piles and shelves and palates of STUFF. Glorious, stinky, oh-so-dirty stuff. I became the daughter of the picker that deep down I have always been, and I got that excitement that some women get when they see a BOGO sale on shoes.
Off in a corner of the warehouse there were a few dozen giant metal drawers. Like - morgue sized drawers, minus the corpses. They stood in about 20 rows, and were stacked clear to the 20 foot ceiling. I was only tall enough to see into about 3 or 4 drawers high, so I managed to get a kid who worked there to bring me one of those rolling staircases. I began going through the drawers like a paleontologist, with careful enthusiasm and a gambler's drive, sure that my treasure would be in the next drawer.
Soon I found an amazing, old brass weather-vane.
It was coated in a gorgeous natural green patina and a healthy layer of dust.
It seemed like it had been waiting for me.
I asked the one legged guy who owned the place (I don't make this stuff up) how much.
"How bout ten bucks?" he said, dragging on his cigarette.
"Sold." I smiled.
There were several other things I wanted to bring on home with me, just because they were weird, but I resisted the urge. I am more in a season of releasing than of gathering, and I am trying to make lasting changes in my behavior so that I can be happier in my home and with the way I spend (waste?) my time.
Still, just for kicks Addy-boy and I wandered around the yard outside. The huge racks and piles of junk out there made me feel like an ant on an alien planet, but there was still an amazing beauty in the peeling paint and rainbows of rust and age. It was fun to be there with Adam and listen to his ideas for all the big strange metal boxes and shelves and cages. Several of them included locking his sisters inside.
We would have stayed lost out there for a few days, but time called us back to our duties and we made our way back through the place to pay for our loot. We were already planning our next adventure as we walked out to the car. There is magic in finding something forgotten by all the world.
***
My weather vane has been sitting on a little table in our entry since it came home. I want to find the perfect place for it, but I don't want it to be put away and forgotten. And each time I look at it I think about the direction(s) that it points. I have tended to let myself be blown by the winds that come up in life, and to let that wind choose my path for me far too often. It is hard to walk against the wind, but sometimes we need to. We really need to. For me, the wind that blows hardest is often my nature, my tendency towards certain behaviors. I would tell myself that the things I do choose me, rather than the other way around, because of my character (or character flaws). I would tell myself that this is just the way I am.
But it doesn't have to be.
So I have begun to shed that old belief, and to step into the wind. It is manifesting in the tiniest ways, but I see it. And as I walk into my particular wind, I am feeling a little stronger each day.
Homeschool -deciding to do it, then deciding how to do it, then re-deciding each week and month as I learn more-, has become truly life altering. I knew I was doing this for my kids, but I never knew how much it was going to change me. I guess I kind of thought I was all done changing in big ways.
But I am just at the beginning of this particular journey,
and the wind is only beginning to pick up speed.
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