We said goodbye to a lot of relics and heirlooms today. We tried to, anyway. Moving into a smaller place forced Mom to make some hard choices and give up a lot of stuff. We tend to accumulate stuff in this family, and some of the stuff we tried to sell at the garage sale today has been around since before any of us were born.

On the other hand, it was a chance for her to make some money off clothes she’ll never wear again. It’s a shame she had to get rid of all her knickknacks, but nobody needs that many rabbit figurines, not really. I tried to talk her into keeping some of them, but she wasn’t going for it.

It’s too bad it rained today, though. Suzanne worked hard last night getting things ready to go out in her driveway, and then this morning when we woke to a steady drizzle she had to scramble to find room in the garage. It’s lucky she has a humongous garage, but the crowds didn’t come out in the rain anyway. We had sporadic visitors until early in the afternoon, and then it dried up. Not the driveway, the traffic.

There seems to be a lot of stuff left, but counting the money and thinking back on what was sold, it appears Mom did pretty well after all. It could have been better on a sunny day, but you have to play the hand you’re dealt. Nobody’s complaining. What good would that do?

Besides, we didn’t really sell anything priceless or irreplaceable. The really, really old things strangers took home with them are mostly things nobody in the family has looked at in years. We still had them because we had room. Now we don’t, and they’re gone. As we went through the boxes a few things came to light that we didn’t want to part with, so we didn’t. If you’re flexible enough to make up the rules as you go along, you can probably eliminate some of the regrets that crop up later on. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway.